Russian official killed in car explosion in eastern Ukraine
Sylvie Claire / November 9, 2023
The victim's son, Ivan Filiponenko, told Lug-Info that his father had received "mortal wounds" in the explosion. According to Lug-Info, Mikhail Filipenko was a deputy in the local parliament and a former leader in the Lugansk separatist army.
Another local MP in this occupied region, Yuri Yurov, claimed on Telegram that Mikhail Filiponenko had already been targeted by a bomb attack in Lugansk against his vehicle on February 21, 2022.
According to this source, he had "miraculously" escaped the explosion alive, and only his driver had been injured.
According to Mr. Yurov, Mikhail Filiponenko was one of the founders of the Lugansk separatist army in 2014, at the start of the war between Kiev and these Moscow-backed pro-Russian troops.
The four Ukrainian territories whose annexation Moscow claims (Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporijjia), are regularly hit by attacks, sometimes fatal, targeting officials of the Russian occupation administration.
Several assassinations or attempted assassinations have been blamed by the Russian authorities on Ukraine since the February 2022 offensive. Prior to this date, pro-Russian-controlled territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions had also been affected by fatal settlements of scores between separatists.
Last week, the Russian security services (FSB) accused Kiev of being behind the attempted assassination in late October in Crimea of a former Ukrainian MP who had defected to Russia, Oleg Tsariov.