A bomb attack in Crimea reportedly killed a former Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia in 2014 when Russia annexed the peninsula.
Russian authorities said a Russian military officer was killed in a targeted attack in Crimea’s largest city, Sevastopol, and a woman was subsequently arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack. They did not release the name of the targeted police officer.
However, unofficial Telegram channels identified the officer as Robert Shagiyev, a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine, the Zaporizhia, who switched allegiance to Russia when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Back in 2014, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense told CNN that the Zaporizhzhia had been requisitioned after being abandoned by its commander and placed under the flag of the Russian naval fleet.
Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvodzhaev said on Telegram that the suspects were acting “on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence services.” Ukraine has not officially commented on the attack.
State TV station Russia 24, citing the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB), said the bomb was planted in a trash can in a park off Stretovsky Boulevard, a busy road in western Sevastopol, and was detonated remotely by the suspect as police walked by.
Russian authorities have also blamed Ukraine for several other assassinations, including the assassinations of two Russian generals in Moscow in April and December 2025, respectively.
Razvodzhaev said on Thursday that another explosion occurred in Sevastopol, killing five people, including four Russian military personnel and a security guard. He said they were trying to remove a bomb from the area following an attack in which a Ukrainian bomb exploded.
