Deadly attack puts spotlight on Russia’s influential military bloggers

The apparent assassination of a prominent Russian military blogger over the weekend placed a spotlight on a group that serves an often overlooked but crucial role in Russia’s war machine.

Before he was killed in an explosion over the weekend, Vladlen Tatarsky was a blogger with hundreds of thousands of subscribers on Telegram who read his frequent updates on the war in Ukraine.

Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, relayed a pro-war agenda and an ultranationalist perspective to his followers, part of a network of patriotic Russian military bloggers who have risen to prominence during the war in Ukraine.

Although many of the bloggers are hawkish supporters of the war, the writers are sometimes critical of the Kremlin for its many setbacks and failures in Ukraine. Yet they are largely embraced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Leon Aron, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Russia’s “mil-bloggers” are able to “supplement” state-run media, which often sugarcoats the war on state-run television, and protect Putin from blame for setbacks on the battlefield.

“Putin keeps them [like] dogs who snap at the heels of the regular military,” Aron said. “This is a device for Putin to channel people’s anger towards the military, rather than himself.”

Russia’s military bloggers first garnered wider attention in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists launched an armed rebellion against the Ukrainian government in the eastern Donbas region.

The bloggers shot to further popularity after Russia invaded Ukraine last year and struggled to make headway, providing detailed updates as the Russian people were looking to understand the complexities of the war.

Bloggers post frequently on Telegram and often include maps, pictures and videos to accompany written analysis. Many of them have contacts deep in the military or on the front line.

Western media outlets and other organizations that provide war coverage, such as the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), sometimes cite the bloggers in articles for insight into Russian thinking.

And they are likely to remain a central cog in Russia’s propaganda machine as long as Putin sees their value, with the Kremlin able to elevate favorable bloggers by offering them television appearances.

Natasha Groom, a senior adviser with the nonprofit negotiation organization Inter Mediate, wrote in an analysis piece published in NATO’s Defense College that Russian bloggers offer “largely unfiltered updates and eyewitness accounts has transformed them into popular sources of information.”

“The pro-war bloggers are fulfilling multiple and nuanced functions in Russia,” Groom wrote in the article first published in January and updated last month. 

“And while their influence should not be overstated, they are becoming an increasingly prominent factor in Russian domestic affairs and the information space.”

Some of the most popular blogger accounts include Rybar, with more than a million subscribers, Igor Girkin, Reverse Side of the Medal and The Grey Zone.

Bloggers also dive into issues outside the battlefield, discussing international and domestic news that relates to Russia or the war effort. 

The popular Russian blog account The Grey Zone published a stern warning to readers on Finland’s accession on Tuesday to NATO, writing the alliance was now “a couple of hundred kilometers from the northern capital of Russia.”

Many bloggers are veterans of the Russian military and some are also affiliated with the mercenary company Wagner Group, as Tatarsky was. Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is leading a vicious assault against Ukraine on the town of Bakhmut.

Those who are more critical of the armed forces for its numerous setbacks are careful not to cross the line, often targeting the Ministry of Defense or Kremlin officials but not Putin himself. 

Girkin, a former Russian commander in Ukraine, stands out as a more publicly dissenting voice. He remarked this week that Russia was headed toward defeat and last year said the “fish’s head was rotten,” in a veiled reference to Putin.

But generally they keep their ire focused on military leadership. 

After Russia lost significant combat power last fall from Ukrainian advances, bloggers slammed the Ministry of Defense for inadequacies. A deadly Ukrainian strike at a Russian base in Makiivka in January also led to intensive blogger criticism of military policies, including stationing a large number of troops in close quarters.

Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with ISW, said Russian bloggers have become so dominant they are now even appointed to working groups, including for human rights councils.

And Russian bloggers are able to help not just with pro-war information, but also with recruitment drives and crowdfunding campaigns to support the war, Stepanenko added.

“Bloggers are very much integrated in the policy world,” Stepanenko said. “Putin has been tolerating these bloggers because he sees a purpose in them.”

Tatarsky, with nearly 600,000 subscribers, played a major part in this evolution of Russia’s military bloggers.

A former convict from Ukraine’s Donetsk region who served time for armed robbery, Tatarsky claimed he joined separatists when they freed him from jail. He would go on to become a military blogger and an author of several books. 

Tatarsky advanced the pro-war message and helped proliferate radical political messages from the Kremlin, such as casting the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against an encroaching and decadent West.

In one of his last posts, Tatarsky quoted a Bible verse and referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, as the “antichrist who kill Russians in the Donbass, dream of gay parades and transgender people.”

Tatarsky is also known for a video he posted to Telegram during an October ceremony marking the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

“We will win over all, we will kill everyone, we will rob everyone,  and everything will be as we like,” he said at the time.

Tatarsky was killed on Sunday when a bomb inside a small sculpture crafted in his likeness exploded at a café in St. Petersburg, also injuring around 30 people, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry. The café was owned by Prigozhin.

Moscow has charged a Russian anti-war activist, Darya Trepova, in connection to the killing, accusing her of carrying out a terrorist attack facilitated by Ukraine. Kyiv has denied involvement in the murder.

Others have speculated that Russian agents may have been behind the attack. Tatarsky was critical of Russian generals and called to prosecute them, while being a Putin loyalist who attended several of the Russian president’s speeches, according to ISW.

Russia’s bloggers also operate in a tight-knit community, often sharing each other’s posts and feeding off the commentary and analysis. 

The death of Tatarsky shocked and upset several bloggers, according to posts on their accounts.

Alexander Kots, a Russian military blogger who also works with the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, said he first met the “ridiculous-looking” Tatarsky a few years ago when he came into the publication’s offices.

Kots wrote on Telegram to his more than 650,000 followers that he was impressed by Tatarsky that day and stayed in touch with him, adding he and other bloggers “will not back down” following his death.

“Around him, he managed to gather a whole army of enthusiastic supporters who will certainly continue his work,” Kots said.