The victim, according to sources in the Ukrainian security services, was Captain Valary Trankovsky, reportedly the chief of staff of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
He was killed when the bomb detonated just after his vehicle had left a supermarket car park in the coastal town of Sevastopol in Russia-occupied Crimea.
Video footage posted on social media showed medical staff removing a body from the shattered remains of a black car.
The Kyiv Post newspaper cited a source within the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) who said the attack was a special operation by the agency carried out after a week-long surveillance mission.
Trankovsky was considered a war criminal in Ukraine for apparently ordering missiles strikes from the Black Sea on civilian targets. In particular, he was held responsible for the attack on the Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia with Kalibr missiles in July 2022, in which 29 civilians were killed, according to the Ukrinform news site.
He also reportedly gave orders to strike Odessa and other Ukrainian cities, which resulted in the deaths of many civilians.
“It is only a matter of time before an atrocity is paid for. No occupier and murderer can feel safe wherever he is," an SBU source was quoted as saying by UNN, a Ukrainian news organization.
In a statement posted on Telegram, the head of occupied Sevastopol’s local authority, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said: “The man killed in the attack was a military man” adding that “the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out.”
