Moscow car bomb severely injures former aide to Ukraine’s pro-Russia ex-PM

Russia has been rocked by two car bomb attacks that killed a senior military figure and seriously injured a suspected intelligence agent, in the latest in a series of assassination attempts believed to have been orchestrated by Kyiv.

On Friday morning a car bomb exploded in southern Moscow, severely injuring Sergei Zavorotniy, 72, a former senior aide to Ukraine’s exiled former prime minister Mykola Azarov.

Russian media reported that Zavorotniy was in an induced coma after losing his left arm in the blast, which also gave him concussion, fractured ribs and other injuries.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched a criminal investigation into the explosion.

Zavorotniy served as a spokesman and adviser to Azarov, who fled to Russia in 2014 after Ukraine’s Maidan revolution toppled the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

A 2020 report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election identified Zavorotniy as an officer of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) involved in influence operations.

The blast in Russia’s capital came a day after a car bomb explosion in St Petersburg killed a senior Russian military official.

That explosion occurred on Thursday morning in the city’s Pushkinsky district, an area home to many military personnel, according to law enforcement officials and media reports.

The victim, who has not been publicly identified, was a colonel in the Russian air force, according to sources cited by the local broadcaster 78.ru.

Fontanka, a St Petersburg-based news outlet, reported that the colonel was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted by a 31-year-old suspect.

According to the outlet, the suspect had tracked the colonel’s movements for months after securing a job at a nearby shop. He reportedly fled Russia for Moldova via Turkey on Thursday morning.

Ukraine has not yet commented on the two attacks.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s intelligence agencies have targeted dozens of senior Russian military officers and Russia-installed officials whom it accuses of involvement in war crimes.

The latest two attacks, carried out in the heavily policed cities of Moscow and St Petersburg, highlight the continued struggle of Russia’s security services to protect senior military personnel nearly five years into the war. In late August a lieutenant colonel serving in a Russian air force and air defence unit was killed in a car bombing in the same St Petersburg neighbourhood.

Vladimir Putin has previously reprimanded his top security officials over the wave of assassinations, prompting tighter security measures.

Little is known about the clandestine Ukrainian networks believed to be operating inside Russia and Russian-occupied territories, carrying out assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure far behind the frontlines.