Two bomb attacks in 48 hours set off alarms in Russia

MoscowCoinciding with the resumption of peace negotiations in Abu Dhabi, two car bomb attacks have struck Russia's two main cities. This Friday morning, in Moscow, the vehicle in which Serhiy Zavorotny was traveling, an advisor to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, under the presidency of the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, exploded. The politician was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. On Thursday, another car exploded in Saint Petersburg, killing an officer of the Russian Aerospace Forces, whose identity has not been confirmed.

Zavorotny, 72, had been Azarov's press secretary before fleeing to Russia in 2014, alongside Yanukovych, following the Maidan uprising. In Moscow, he became the spokesperson for the Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine, a kind of government-in-exile alternative to the new authorities in Kyiv. In the last decade, he had directed the pro-Russian newspaper Antifashist and had defended the thesis that the Euromaidan was instigated by the United States. The report of the US Senate Intelligence Committee on Russian interference in the 2016 elections identifies him as a Russian foreign intelligence officer involved in influence operations.

According to Russian media close to the security forces, Zavorotny had traveled just 200 meters in his car through the Chertanovo district, in the south of the capital, when the detonation occurred and his body was thrown into the street. Initially, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case for attempted murder, although it could review it and consider it an attack, which no one has claimed responsibility for. The main hypothesis is that the bomb was placed under the car.

Another officer murdered

This comes the day after another car bomb killed an officer on the Kolpinskoye highway in Saint Petersburg. For some months now, the authorities have not been reporting the identity of the Russian military personnel who are victims of attacks within the country, nor have they commented on the incidents. Even so, independent media have put two names on the table: Dmitri Lobodin, a colonel in the aerospace forces, and Andrei Khodykin, deputy commander of that same branch of the military, both of them veterans of the war in Ukraine.

The police are looking for a Russian citizen as the alleged perpetrator of the attack. All that is known is that he took a stand against the invasion, participated in protests, and made donations to Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, and it is suspected that he has fled to Turkey. According to these media outlets, the man obtained the explosives from another person who, in turn, picked them up from a balloon that crossed the border with Finland.

It is the second car bomb attack in the same area of Saint Petersburg in three months. In August, another officer, in this case a major, also from the air force, died when he started his vehicle near his home. Since the beginning of the war, more than thirty high-ranking officials from the security forces have suffered attacks on Russian territory.

This chain of attacks has caused tensions between the security services and the army. A few months ago, the General Staff reproached the FSB for not having been capable of watching over their generals, while the spies replied that it was the military personnel who had to take precautions and take charge of their own surveillance. In February, Vladimir Putin ordered increased protection for high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense, those responsible for the military industry, and regional and municipal authorities.