Suspected assassination in St. Petersburg: Senior Russian army officer killed in car explosion
The explosive device was detonated in a vehicle near a supermarket, and according to reports, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel was killed and his wife was seriously injured. The immediate suspect is Kyiv, which has been attributed with a series of assassinations on Russian soil in recent weeks. The Kremlin denies that the CIA director warned Vladimir Putin not to attack NATO countries, calling them "scare stories." Moscow warns London not to transfer weapons to Volodymyr Zelensky that will be used against it: "We will strike British targets in Ukraine and beyond."
A senior officer in the Russian army, whose rank is equivalent to that of a lieutenant colonel, was killed on Thursday before noon in a car explosion in St. Petersburg, in what appears to be another assassination of a senior official in the Russian security establishment, allegedly by Ukraine or elements associated with it. The explosion came against the backdrop of an escalation in the fighting between Kyiv and Moscow, which includes repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic targets deep inside Russia and threats by the Kremlin to strike directly at the allies of the Ukrainians, led by the UK, due to their support.
According to reports in Russia, the explosion occurred around 10:00 AM local time near a supermarket in the Shushary neighborhood of St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest city. The officer's wife was also in the vehicle and was seriously injured. Initial reports indicate that an improvised explosive device exploded inside the car. Russian police announced that they have opened a criminal investigation.
Kyiv has carried out numerous assassination operations throughout the war deep inside Russia, many of them in Moscow and its surroundings. Just two weeks ago, Robert Shagayev, who previously commanded the "Zaporizhzhia" submarine in the Ukrainian army but defected to Russia, was eliminated in an operation attributed to it on the Crimean Peninsula. He was killed in the explosion of a device planted in a trash can. Two weeks before that, five people were killed in an explosive device blast at an Italian restaurant in Moscow. Between these two events, assassination attempts were reported on two managers of Russian drone factories.
Prominent assassinations allegedly carried out by Ukraine previously included the assassination last June of General Damir Davidov, head of the Missile and Artillery Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, in a car explosion, and the assassination in December in the heart of Moscow of Lieutenant General Penil Sarbarov, who headed the Operational Training Department in the Russian General Staff. They were preceded by the assassination of Armen Sarkisyan, founder of the "Arbat Battalion," who was eliminated in February last year in an explosion as he exited an elevator; Igor Kirillov, who headed the "Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Defense Forces," who was killed in December 2024 in the explosion of a device planted in an electric scooter; the pro-Russian regime blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was eliminated in an explosion at a cafe in 2023; and Darya Dugina, who was killed in 2022 in a car explosion aimed at her father, the Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin denied reports that appeared in the American media that the US fears that Russia might soon attack a NATO member state and that the purpose of CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow was to warn Russia not to do so. According to the reports, one of the concerns in Washington is that Russia will try to attack one of the Baltic states, thus putting to the test the commitment of the attacked NATO allies to stand by its side and intervene. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: "Many materials of this kind of scare stories are being published now. Of course, this has nothing to do with reality and nothing to do with the intentions of the Russian Federation." He said this shortly after the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, confirmed that he held a "working meeting" with Ratcliffe in Moscow this week.
In another military-political development, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned the UK that Russia would respond to incidents in which the Ukrainian army uses weapons supplied by London against it. "The response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory may include striking any British military facility and equipment in Ukraine and beyond," Zakharova said. She specifically noted that Moscow is monitoring the transfer of knowledge required for the production of Storm Shadow missiles from London to Kyiv. The Russian news agency "RIA" noted that the British newspaper "The Times" previously reported that Ukraine had begun using British-made drones to carry out strikes deep inside Russian territory, with the main target being oil refineries.
