Car Bomb Severely Injures Exiled Pro-Kremlin Ukrainian Official In Moscow
A targeted assassination attempt via car bombing has once again rocked Moscow. This time, the "pro-Kremlin" target survived, in what authorities are calling an attempted murder case and act of terrorism.
A onetime spokesman to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov is said to be serious condition Friday in a local hospital, after narrowly surviving an explosion beneath his SUV in the south of the city.
The man has been identified as 72-year old Sergei Zavorotny. After the blast, reportedly the result of a magnetic bomb placed beneath the vehicle, he was quickly given first aid by passersby on the side of the road.
After formally leaving politics, Zavorotny has long worked as a journalist and commentator. Local reports suggest he's in very bad shape after barely making it out of the blast.
He was Prime Minister Azarov's press aide in Kyiv until 2014. BBC notes, "But when pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was toppled from power, Azarov fled Kyiv for Russia and tried unsuccessfully to set up a government in exile."
Zavorotny - seen as a close Azarov confidant - has been sought by Ukrainian security services ever since:
In 2019 a Ukrainian court sentenced Yanukovych to 13 years in prison in absentia for treason, and Kyiv later placed sanctions on him and Azarov.
Zavorotny called the sanctions against his former boss emblematic of "a kind of Ukrainian-style McCarthyism, where local authorities simply 'snap to attention' and carry out the orders of their overseas supervisors," in comments to Russia's RBC newspaper.
Only the day prior, a Russian colonel was killed in another explosion in St Petersburg. The blasts suggest that Ukrainian intelligence is once again ramping up assassination and sabotage efforts inside Russia.
The circumstances of Thursday's St Peternsburb blast were similar:
A Russian colonel has been killed in a car explosion outside St Petersburg, according to reports. Investigators have opened a murder probe after an unnamed serviceman died in the blast in the city’s Pushkinsky District early on Thursday.
A bomb is believed to have been strapped to the underside of the vehicle, detonating on the Kolpino Highway around 7am local time, according to local media.
An unnamed source told Russian outlet Fontanka that a colonel had killed in the blast while driving. A family member travelling with them was injured by shrapnel, they added.
This adds to a growing list of high profile assassinations related to the Ukraine war. To review of a partial list of some of the most high profile killings:
—Darya Dugina was killed in a car bombing in 2022 which was likely meant for her father, prominent political thinker and often dubbed "Putin ally" Aleksandr Dugin.
—Gen Igor Kirillov died in December 2024 outside of his residence when a bomb planted in a nearby scooter detonated.
—Gen Yaroslav Moskalik, who served as deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was killed in a car bomb attack in April 2025. A "homemade" explosive device detonated under his Volkswagen Golf in a residential neighborhood.
Throughout the course of the war there's been a string of these mysterious assassinations on Russian soil involving car and even cafe bombs.