KYIV: Ukraine orchestrated an attack on the annexed Crimean peninsula that killed a high-ranking Russian military official, a source in Ukraine’s security services told AFP on Wednesday.
The killing, which was confirmed by Moscow, is the latest in a string of targeted attacks on Russian military officers and pro-Kremlin public figures in occupied Ukrainian territory and within Russia.
The source in the Security Service of Ukraine said the agency had orchestrated a car bomb attack in the city of Sevastopol that killed senior naval officer Valery Trankovsky, a first rank captain in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
“As a result of the explosion, the Russian captain’s legs were blown off and he died of blood loss,” the source added in written comments.
It described Trankovsky as “war criminal” responsible for the launch of cruise missiles from the Black Sea at civilian targets in Ukraine.
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The car exploded and caught fire in the city’s eastern Gagarin district around 0700 GMT, the Russian-installed Sevastopol governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said.
“As a result of an improvised explosive device fixed to the bottom of the car exploding, a Russian armed forces serviceman was killed,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement after the incident, without naming Trankovsky.
They said they had opened an investigation into “the fact of committing a terrorist attack”.
A witness who spoke to Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid said the driver was thrown by the impact on to the passenger seat and “everyone realised immediately that he had been blown up”.
“The explosives had been placed on the side of the driver’s seat,” the unnamed woman said, adding that the car had been moving at the time of the blast.
Shrapnel from the explosion hit several other vehicles but no one was injured, the witness added.
In October, Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed an official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In April, a car bomb in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine’s eastern Lugansk region killed a Moscow-appointed government official.