A senior Russian military colonel has been killed in a suspected car-bomb attack in Vladimir Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg.
The blast struck around 7 a.m. Thursday in the Slavyanka neighborhood of the city’s Pushkinsky district. The bomb had been attached to the underside of the car and exploded after the officer had driven approximately 330 yards from his courtyard, according to Russian outlet Fontanka.
Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed that a serviceman had been killed and opened a murder investigation, but did not publicly identify the victim or confirm his rank.
Trump previously said he would end the Russia-Ukraine war on the first day of his second term.
Fontanka reported that he was a colonel serving in the 6th Air Force and Air Defense Army, which is responsible for protecting airspace over northwestern and central Russia.
The colonel’s identity remains officially undisclosed, although Ukrainian monitoring channel Supernova has floated three possible names: Col. Andrei Khodykin, Col. Dmitry Lobodin and Col. Viktor Pozdnyakov. All three reportedly served in the 6th Army.
All three officers have been named in Ukraine’s Book of Executioners, a database documenting Russian military personnel accused of war crimes.
Pozdnyakov was linked to attacks on civilian targets in northeastern Ukraine, Lobodin reportedly participated in the 2022 invasion, and Khodykin was accused of overseeing political indoctrination within Russian forces.
Russian casualties in the war are mounting.
Fontanka reported that investigators suspect a 31-year-old St. Petersburg resident of planting the improvised explosive device beneath the car. The suspect allegedly spent a month working at a nearby hypermarket, possibly using the job to monitor the officer’s movements.
According to the outlet, the suspect retrieved the bomb from a hidden cache after it had allegedly been delivered by a balloon from one of the Baltic states.
He reportedly fled Russia shortly after planting the device, initially flying to Turkey before travelling to Moldova. Russian investigators had identified him but were unable to apprehend him before he left the country.
It is the second time in less than three months that a Russian military officer has been killed in a car explosion in the same neighborhood.
On August 27, a vehicle carrying Russian military officer Major Sergey Sechkov and his wife exploded in Slavyanka. Sechkov, 43, was killed, while his wife was seriously injured and taken to intensive care.
He served in Russia’s 332nd Separate Guards Helicopter Regiment, which Ukraine’s military intelligence had accused of conducting missile and bomb strikes against civilian targets in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions. Sechkov had reportedly warned superiors that he feared being targeted for assassination and regularly checked his vehicle before driving.
Rutte said Trump’s buddy Putin is failing on the battlefield.
The latest attack comes as Moscow faces mounting military losses in Ukraine.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Wednesday that Russian forces were losing more than 40,000 troops killed or seriously wounded each month, with preliminary figures suggesting October’s toll could have exceeded 50,000.
“The U.S. in 14 years, in Vietnam, lost 56,000. Here in one month, Russia, dead or seriously wounded, 40,000,” Rutte said at the Atlantic Future Forum.
Trump previously promised he would end the Russia-Ukraine war within “one day” of returning to the White House in January 2025.
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