The St. Petersburg blast took the lives of talented and wonderful people

On April 4, Russia’s Investigative Committee published a partial list of victims in the St. Petersburg metro bomb blast, and it includes 10 of the 14 whose bodies have been identified. The explosion in the train car between the Sennaya Ploschad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations occurred at 2:40 p.m. local time on April 3. More than 50 people were injured. The youngest to perish was 17 years old and the oldest was 71. RBTH tells the stories of some who were killed in the tragedy. 

After recently returning from Kazakhstan, 20-year-old Maxim Aryshev, a student at St. Petersburg State Economic University, was heading home after his studies. His friends said he wanted to become a programmer and was happy with his beloved Alexandra. "During the year we spent together I became convinced that he was the one I wanted to spend my entire life with," she wrote on social media.

Photo: vk.com/duckky

The day that brought news of Maxim's death also brought false claims in the media that he was the suicide bomber, but this was quickly refuted. Maxim's classmates remember that, "he was cheerful, sociable, loved to joke around, be sarcastic. He was the life of the party and had many friends."

He liked Jimmy Carr jokes, Dilbert comic strips and the rock band, Agatha Christie. He used a quote from one of the band's songs, "Rug helicopter," as his status signature: "We are flying, but you are crawling, geeks, you geeks."