Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comment on war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky’s death in a bomb blast

On April 2, war correspondent Maxim Fomin, also known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in a bomb blast in St Petersburg.  The law enforcement agencies will qualify the incident in legal terms. We, for our part, will provide a moral assessment.   

Russian journalists are constantly facing the threat of violence from the Kiev regime and its masterminds, and their threats are carried out with an increasing frequency.  Journalists are harassed, branded with special markings on the digital platforms of US internet monopolies, and ostracised by the Western media.  All of this is being tacitly ignored by the related international organisations, whose behaviour can no longer be interpreted as anything other than pandering, if not complicity.

Neither the Western countries, nor international organisations or foreign professional associations, have shown any compassion, let alone held an investigation into a single case of violent death befalling Russian journalists which the Kiev regime and its thugs hailed as a “success.”   

Just recently, the West was at war against extremism and terrorism and marched in Paris in protest at terrorist attacks committed against journalists. Today, the lack of reaction from the White House, Downing Street, Elysee Palace, etc., given their ostensible concern for journalists’ wellbeing, is self-revelatory. What is also astonishing is the unconcealed jubilation that the news about the assassination evoked among the recipients of Western handouts in Kiev.

It is thanks to Russian war correspondents that the world sees truthful and promptly delivered footage and gets news about the latest developments in Ukraine.  These people safeguard the truth that the world mainstream media have abused. The Kiev regime hated Vladlen Tatarsky’s professional work and service to his homeland. They saw him as a danger, but he did his duty and was true to his courageous self until the end. We would like to convey our sincere condolences to his family and friends.