A senior Russian naval officer was killed in a car bombing in Crimea on Wednesday, marking the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel and pro-Kremlin figures in occupied Ukrainian territories and inside Russia.
An official in Ukraine’s security services told the Ukrainian Pravda outlet that the agency had orchestrated the car bomb attack in the Russian-controlled port city of Sevastopol that killed Valery Trankovsky, the chief of staff of the 41st Missile Brigade of the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.
The official added that Trankovsky was “a war criminal” who had ordered missile strikes from the Black Sea at civilian targets in Ukraine. Russia has used warships from its Black Sea fleet, as well as strategic bombers, to conduct missile strikes on targets across Ukraine that have led to hundreds of civilian casualties.
Without naming Trankovsky, Russia’s investigative committee confirmed the attack.
“As a result of an improvised explosive device fixed to the bottom of the car exploding, a Russian armed forces serviceman was killed,” the committee said, adding that they had opened an investigation into “the fact of committing a terrorist attack”.
Russian media reported that the explosion tore off Trankovsky’s legs and he died from blood loss. Trankovsky had reportedly been under surveillance for about a week, with the homemade explosive device detonated remotely.
Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. But little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russian-controlled areas.
In October, a high-ranking officer in the GRU military intelligence service who had recently returned from fighting in Ukraine was assassinated outside his house in a village in the Moscow region.
The same month, Ukraine claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed an official at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv is also believed to be behind the killing of a former Russian submarine captain, who was shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and may have been tracked through his profile on the Strava fitness app.
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Apart from military figures, Ukraine has targeted prominent Russian pro-war propagandists, including Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue, who was killed in 2023 when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said last December that it had cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea who were involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures.