Ukrainian officials have taken credit for a car bomb that killed a Russian-backed politician Wednesday, calling the act retribution. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense wrote on Telegram that “traitors to Ukraine and collaborators with terrorist Russia in temporarily occupied territories … will receive just retribution!
The hunt continues!” Andriy Cherniak, representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, told Politico “it was our operation.”
The Telegram post claimed that members of the resistance in the occupied territory helped carry out the killing of Luhansk legislature member Mikhail Filiponenko, who had survived a previous car bombing just days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Filiponenko formerly led Moscow-backed separatist troops in Luhansk and represented the group in the cease-fire monitoring center in the region before the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year, Radio Free Europe reported.
Photos from the scene showed a mangled dark-colored SUV with blood smeared across the backseat and coating the side of the vehicle.
Within hours, Ukraine’s military spy agency confirmed it was responsible for having eliminated Filiponenko in a joint operation with local “resistance” forces.
Filiponenko was targeted as a “war criminal” and “executioner” who ran “torture camps” in Luhansk where prisoners of war and even civilians suffered “inhumane” treatment, the intelligence agency claimed. “Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people,” the spy agency claimed.
Filiponenko had been involved in Luhansk’s pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014. He had served as one of the top commanders in the army of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, which Kyiv has designated a terrorist organization.
