A local pro-Russian official was killed Wednesday by the explosion of an “unidentified device” placed in a car in Lugansk, an occupied city in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Investigative Committee announced in a statement . Oleg Popov, a former local deputy, died “following the detonation of an unidentified device in a car”, said this source, adding that the circumstances of his death are “being established”.
kyiv accused of several assassinations
The Russian Investigative Committee said Oleg Popov had been elected twice to the pro-Russian parliament in Lugansk and released images showing a destroyed and charred car, surrounded by investigators at work. According to local media Lug-info, the man, aged 51, was an entrepreneur who joined the pro-Russian separatists after the start of their conflict with Kiev in 2014. He notably headed a pro-Russian Parliament committee in charge of questions of security and defense, according to this source.
Attacks, sometimes fatal, regularly take place in the four Ukrainian territories that Moscow claims to annex (Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia), targeting officials of the Russian occupation administration. At the beginning of November, also in the Lugansk region, Ukraine claimed responsibility for the car bomb assassination of Mikhail Filiponenko, a deputy and former senior local military official.
The Russian security services (FSB) for their part accused kyiv of being behind the assassination attempt at the end of October in annexed Crimea of a former Ukrainian MP who had defected to the Russian side, Oleg Tsariov. Moscow has also accused Ukraine of being behind several assassinations or assassination attempts on Russian territory since February 2022. Before this date, territories under pro-Russian control in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions had also already been affected. by deadly settling of scores between separatists.