A senior Russian naval officer has been killed in a car bombing in occupied Crimea – the latest in a series of targeted attacks on Russian military personnel.
Russian investigators said an unnamed serviceman was killed when an improvised explosive device detonated on Wednesday in the port city of Sevastopol – the primary headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – and that the killing was being treated as terrorism.
In what will be a blow to the morale of Russian military leaders, a source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said shortly after the blast that the explosion had killed naval captain Valery Trankovsky – in a hit orchestrated by the SBU.
Describing the hit as legitimate and in line with the customs of war, the source called Trankovsky “a war criminal” for ordering missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets, including repeated attacks on Odesa and a missile strike that killed 29 people and injured more than 200 others in the city of Vinnytsia in July 2022.
Despite having been significantly depleted and scattered to more remote locations by Ukrainian drone attacks, Russia has repeatedly used Vladimir Putin’s prized Black Sea Fleet to conduct missile strikes against Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Baza, a Telegram channel close to Russia’s security services, published images of the car’s wreckage and also identified the serviceman as “Valery T”, describing him as a “captain first rank” for the Black Sea Fleet. It said he was the former chief of staff of the missile ship brigade.
Both Baza and the Kyiv source said the bomb had detonated on Taras Shevchenko Street, which is named after Ukraine’s most famous poet, with the SBU source claiming Trankovsky died of blood loss after losing his legs in the attack.
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 it had opened an investigation into “the fact of committing a terrorist attack”.
Several military figures and pro-Kremlin Russians have been assassinated since the start of the war in operations that Moscow have blamed on Ukraine, including war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and former submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky.
Alongside Trankovsky, each were listed in Myrotvorets, a huge unofficial Ukrainian database – whose name translates to “peacemaker” – of people considered to be enemies of Kyiv. On Wednesday, Trankovsky’s photo on the site was overlaid with the word “liquidated” in red letters.
Russia’s FSB security service claimed in December to have cracked a network of Ukrainian agents in Crimea involved in attempts to assassinate pro-Russian figures, including Moscow-installed Crimea chief Sergei Aksyonov, and ex-Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleg Tsaryov, who survived after being shot twice in October.
The car bombing on Wednesday came as explosions were heard above Kyiv, after Ukraine accused Russia of launching its first missile attacks against the capital since August.
Air raid warnings blared for hours as Russia targeted eight regions of Ukraine on Wednesday, firing six ballistic and cruise missiles and 90 drones, the Ukrainian air force said. Air defences downed four missiles and 37 drones, and another 47 drones were stopped by electronic jamming, Kyiv said.
Speaking as he met with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Brussels on Wednesday, Kyiv’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha warned that the future of global security was now being decided in Ukraine – and urged expedited help from Kyiv’s allies as he cautioned that the conflict was at a critical moment.
Mr Blinken, who also met Nato chief Mark Rutte on Wednesday, insisted that Joe Biden’s administration is committed to sending “every dollar we have at our disposal” to Ukraine before Donald Trump returns to the White House in January.
Nato members must focus their efforts on “ensuring that Ukraine has the money, munitions and mobilised forces to fight effectively in 2025, or to be able to negotiate a peace from a position of strength”, said Mr Blinken.
Additional reporting by agencies
