A pro-war Russian military blogger died Sunday in a café explosion that rocked the country’s second-largest city and injured more than two dozen people.

Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, an ultra-nationalist and anti-Ukraine propagandist, was giving a talk about his frontline reporting at the Street Food Bar No. 1 in St. Petersburg when he was killed, according to The Telegraph.

A woman presented him with a statuette in a box that apparently exploded, according to Russian media and military bloggers.

It’s unclear if the attack was targeted or who was responsible for the blast, which Russia’s Interior Ministry said wounded 25 others. Of those, 19 were brought to the hospital, according to the regional governor, Alexander Beglov.

Tatarsky – whose real name was Maxim Fomin – regularly reported from Ukraine. He’d gathered more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging account and was known for his blustery, pro-war rhetoric.

The patriotic Russian group that hosted the event said it had security protocols, but “regrettably, they proved insufficient.”

Russian authorities said they’d opened a murder investigation as a result of the killing.

The ministry said the event’s attendees were being checked for involvement.

Tatarsky was from Makiivka near Donetsk in Ukraine, according to the New York Times. But he thought of himself as Russian, and was a leading figure in a group of bloggers who supported Moscow’s invasion of its smaller neighbor, the Times said.

He’d also called to eliminate Ukraine as a state, the paper said.

“We need to end this state sooner or later,” Mr. Tatarsky said Saturday in his latest video, according to the Times. “This needs to be our policy.”

The blast also damaged the building, NBC News said.

With Post wires