A well-known Russian military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, authorities said.

There are several prominent bloggers like Tatarsky covering Russia’s war in Ukraine for subscribers on online platforms like Telegram. Some have raised hundreds of thousands.

While Tatarsky was ardently pro-war, he was also critical of Moscow’s campaign setbacks – a fairly rare phenomenon in the Russian public sphere.

Background and combat experience: Tatarsky’s real name was Maxim Fomin.

In 2014, he fought with Russian separatists against Ukrainian nationalists in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, according to Russian state news agency Vesti, citing public sources.

Tatarsky created his Telegram channel in 2019, naming it after the protagonist of Victor Pelevin’s novel “Generation ‘P'”, according to Vesti. He went on to write several books.

Tatarsky supported the war in Ukraine. He gained popularity online by providing analysis and commentary during the invasion of Russia.

Rare review: Tatarsky had over half a million subscribers on Telegram, and while he was aggressively pro-war, he was sometimes critical of Russian setbacks in Ukraine.

Public criticism of the Moscow war is rare in Russia.

In May last year, he told CNN he was not criticizing the overall operation, but rather “individual episodes”, and that he still believed Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, he called for vast change in response to the halting progress of the invasion of Moscow.

“All areas need improvement,” he said. “Every war reveals drawbacks, shortcomings or false experiences, experiences that need to be adjusted to modern realities. So absolutely all areas need to be reformed.”

Tatarsky rose to prominence after attending a Kremlin ceremony that marked the annexation of four Ukrainian regions (a move rejected as illegal under international law by Ukraine and its Western allies).