Russian security officials fighting for life after car bombing
Video shows the fiery aftermath of a car bomb that left two top Putin security officials hospitalized with shrapnel wounds.
The flaming SUV appears to have crashed into a thorny bush as the flames engulf what’s left of the vehicle.
Russian media outlet ASTRA reports that the attempted assassination took place in the Russian-occupied city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on November 16.
At the wheel was Lt. Col. Vladimir Pakholenko, the deputy head of the criminal investigations department of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. Also in the car was Deputy Interior Minister Oleg Shumilov.
Both men managed to escape and were taken to the hospital with shrapnel wounds. Their current condition remains unknown.
Pakholenko may have been targeted for his shifting alliegaces. According to Russian media, he worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Ukraine until 2014, when Russian started moving in and he switched sides.
The video shows the ravaged remains of the Patriot UAZ that the men were driving. Smoke and flames billow into the sky as a bystander films the wreck.
It is unclear who ordered the attack.
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But earlier this month, Ukraine took responsibility for killing a Putin ally in a different car bombing in the same region.
Mikhail Filiponenko, a member of the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was blown up as a warning that “traitors to Ukraine and collaborators with terrorist Russia in temporarily occupied territories โฆ will receive just retribution,” Ukraine’s military spy agency said.
Ukraine branded Filiponenko as someone who “himself personally brutally tortured people.”
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