Ukraine said on Wednesday it was behind the killing of a Russian-backed politician and former militia leader who died in a car bombing in eastern Ukraine.
Russian investigators said earlier that Mikhail Filiponenko, a lawmaker in the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was killed on Wednesday morning when an “unidentified explosive device” exploded under his SUV.
In a statement issued a few hours after the attack, Ukraine’s military intelligence said it had carried out a “special operation to eliminate” Filiponenko and worked “jointly with representatives of the resistance movement.”
Several high-profile supporters of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and officials appointed by Moscow have been attacked since Russia launched its offensive last February – although direct claims of responsibility from Kiev are rare.
Filiponenko was a member of the Luhansk regional parliament and a former leader of a Moscow-backed separatist militia formed in 2014 to fight Kiev.
Moscow-backed proxies in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions sparked a civil war in Kiev in 2014 following a pro-European revolution.
Last year, Russia claimed to have annexed Luhansk along with three other Ukrainian regions, although it did not have full control over them.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian Investigative Committee released a video of forensic teams working at the site of the explosion. It showed a wrecked, dark-colored four-wheeler parked on the side of the road with blood smeared on the driver’s seat.
It was said that a criminal investigation had been launched.
Russian-appointed head of the region Leonid Pasechnik hailed Filiponenko as a “real man” and described his death as a “grave loss” in a social media post.
Ukrainian military intelligence said it would continue to target “war criminals and collaborators” working with Russia.
It alleged that Filiponenko “personally and brutally tortured” civilians and prisoners of war while serving in the Luhansk militia.
Last month, Oleg Tsarev, a pro-Kremlin politician whom Moscow was reportedly eyeing to lead a puppet government in Kiev, survived being shot at his hotel complex on the annexed Crimean peninsula.
Russia said Ukrainian intelligence services were behind that and several other attacks, including the car bombing of nationalist Daria Dugina outside Moscow last year and the bombing of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a St. Petersburg cafe in April.