Joshua Yaffa writes about Darya Trepova, who has been sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison for killing the Russian propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky using a bomb.
A man in the crowd, one of Tatarsky’s supporters, filmed the chaotic scene with his phone—“I think our speaker is fucked,” he said—and captured the moment when the woman who gave Tatarsky the statue walked out into the street, dazed and wobbly. She was quickly identified as Darya Trepova, a twenty-six-year-old former medical student from a suburb of St. Petersburg. Friends described her as an avowed vegan and a connoisseur of vintage fashion.
” At the time, Rylov and Trepova were just friends, having met at a party in St. Petersburg a couple of years earlier. But, that March, a few weeks after their arrest, he proposed—more a means of facilitating a move abroad than a gesture of true love, he admits. Still, they married and began getting their documents in order. But, Rylov insists, over time their feelings became deeper and more romantic. That September, when Russia announced a military draft, Rylov left the country.