Thread by @CandaceRondeaux

When the history of the #WagnerGroup is written, the assassination of #VladenTartarsky in #St.Petersburg today will be viewed as a major turning point in #Russia’s war of aggression against #Ukraine.🧵

1/This is a huge deal. Russian milblogger Tartarsky’s assassins chose a chic restaurant frequented by St.Petersburg’s nouveau riche bling babies, and owned by #WagnerGroup godfather Yevgeny Prigozhin.

2/The bombing site was Street Food Bar No.1, which is located only a few minutes walk from the Old Customs House, the site of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s first upscale restaurant.

3/Prigozhin's first truly upscale restaurant was also a regular haunt of Vladimir Putin & Putin's old boss Anatoly Sobchak, the late mayor of St.Petersburg.

4//In a statement issued on social media by Prigozhin’s company Concord Consulting &Management, Prigozhin noted he’d given the bistro to the Cyber Front Z, which on Tartarsky’s watch churned out genocidal propaganda on an industrial scale.

5//Prigozhin noted the similarities w/ the fatal car bombing that killed Tartarsky’s gal pal, far-right propagandist Daria Dugina last year.For those who forget:Dugina was the daughter of hard right political philosopher Alexander Dugin aka "Putin's Brain."

6/But interestingly, Prigozhin was careful to say up front that he did not believe Kyiv was behind Tartarksy’s killing & the bombing of his bistro.”I think that there is a group of radicals that is hardly related to the government,” Prigozhin said.

7/n the coming days, as the investigation into the bombing unfolds, there will be much speculation-maybe even a few arrests. Who is Prigozhin thinking of here? Who was the woman who handed Tartarsky a figurine before the explosion?

8/Can it be a coincidence that the bombing took place on the same strip of prime real estate where Prigozhin first launched his catering company in 1995 and 1 year later the luxurious Old Customs House restaurant?

9/Which part of #Putin’s government is #Prigozhin trying to finger for Tartarsky’s killing? Could it be Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu or Army Chief Valery Gerasimov?

10/We may never know. But killing the Wagner Group’s top propagandist at a bistro owned by the paramilitary's chief financier only blocks from where his career took off suggests a certain intimacy of knowledge about Prigozhin. Someone who knows him well wants him down hard.Who?🤔