Ukraine said Wednesday it had assassinated a Russian officer responsible for war crimes, targeting him with a car bomb inside Russia.
Veniamin Mazzherin, who died at the weekend, was the deputy commander of a Russian military police unit in Kemerovo, southwest Siberia, according to Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.
The Russian Guard special unit he helped lead was allegedly involved in “war crimes and genocide against the Ukrainian people” in Kyiv during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the intelligence service said.
CNN has asked the Russian Ministry of Defense and the National Guard of Russia for comment.
Video issued by the intelligence service shows an unidentified person holding a remote control, then pans to reveal a silver car on a road before the car explodes in a burst of flames.
In the video, the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence said it had carried out surveillance on Mazzherin in an operation designed to “eliminate the executioner of the Ukrainian people.”
The reported killing of Mazzherin is the latest in a string of assassinations of Russian figures inside their own territory.
In April, Russian General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in a car explosion outside Moscow. Russian authorities said they charged a “Ukrainian special services agent” with terrorism, though Ukraine did not claim any responsibility for the incident.
A few months before that, a top Russian general accused of using chemical weapons in Ukraine was killed by a remotely detonated bomb planted in an electric scooter outside an apartment building in Moscow. A source with knowledge of the operation told CNN that Ukraine’s security services were behind the assassination.
In November 2023, Ukraine said it was responsible for the assassination of Mikhail Filiponenko, a lawmaker in a Kremlin-installed assembly in the occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk. Filiponenko was also killed with a car bomb.
Meanwhile, the war continues
Elsewhere, on the front line in southern Ukraine, a children’s hospital in Kherson was attacked by Russian forces Wednesday, causing a number of injuries, according to regional authorities.
A nine-year-old girl suffered a mine-blast injury and shrapnel wounds to her lower leg, Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson regional military administration, said in a post on Telegram. Several other children and health care workers were also injured, the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the shelling a “deliberate Russian attack specifically against children, against medical personnel (and) against basic guarantees of life in the community” in a post on X, saying that Russia “could not have been unaware” of what it was striking.
“Russia is now the largest terrorist organization in the world, which is not only dragging out its terrorist war but also trying to do everything possible to ensure that no opportunity to end the war succeeds,” the Ukrainian leader continued.
“Terrorists must be dealt with only as they deserve – with strength and just treatment. I thank everyone who helps Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
Meanwhile, on Ukraine’s eastern front, Russian forces have infiltrated the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, according to Ukrainian officials. Tens of thousands of troops have amassed in the direction of Pokrovsk, the 7th Corps of the Airborne Forces of Ukraine said in a Telegram post Wednesday.
CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the developments in Pokrovsk and the reported strike in Kherson.
