(Reuters) – A Russian-appointed deputy governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vitaly Bulyuk, was injured on Monday when his car exploded, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported, citing the occupation administration’s health minister.
Five weeks ago, Kirill Stremousov, another deputy head of the Russian-installed Kherson administration, was killed in a car crash after his driver tried to avoid hitting a truck, according to authorities.
Shortly afterwards, Moscow ordered its troops to withdraw from the western part of Kherson province on the west bank of the Dnipro river, which had been occupied since early in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexed by Russia in October.
Moscow calls its war in Ukraine a “special military operation” to degrade the Ukrainian military and remove what it says is a potential threat against its own security. Ukraine and its allies call the war that began in late February an unprovoked act of aggression.
On Monday, the Russian-appointed minister, Vadim Ilmiyev, said Bulyuk was in a stable condition.
“The driver of the car died on the spot,” he said, according to Interfax. “According to my information, a directional mine went off – the car burned out.”
It was not clear whether explosives had been attached to the car. Numerous officials in Russian-appointed occupation administrations have been killed or injured in recent months. The Kyiv government has declined to say whether the attacks were the work of Ukrainian partisans.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that Bulyuk’s car had exploded near his home in the town of Skadovsk, and did not disguise his approval for the attack on a “traitor” and “collaborator”.
Russia’s withdrawal from western Kherson and the regional capital of the same name is the biggest setback it has suffered in any of the four Ukrainian provinces that Moscow ceremonially declared in October to be an eternal part of Russia, despite not being in full control of any of them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government has pledged to expel Russian forces from all the territories they have occupied.
(Writing by Kevin Liffey; editing by Grant McCool)
