In St Petersburg, a Russian air force officer died when his car exploded

An explosion killed a Russian armed forces officer today, Thursday 27 August, in St Petersburg whilst he was in his car with his wife, who was seriously injured and is receiving the necessary treatment. This was reported by the St Petersburg-based newspaper Fontanka. The vehicle was blown up in the Slavyanka district, the newspaper states, adding that the soldier killed was a lieutenant-colonel serving in the Russian Aerospace Forces.

A local shopkeeper told Telegram channel 112 that the car exploded as it was leaving a pay-and-display car park. Previously, the Investigative Committee had reported that a criminal investigation had been opened into a "car fire", in which an officer had died and his wife had been injured. However, it had not commented on the causes of the fire. 

Although it is not yet possible to say whether this was a Ukrainian operation, today’s explosion forms part of a long series of targeted killings of Russian officers, which Moscow systematically attributes to the special services in Kyiv. The most recent incident dates back to 13 August, when a device hidden in a rubbish bin exploded in Sevastopol as a Ministry of Defence soldier was passing by, killing him. The FSB arrested a 32-year-old Russian woman, claiming she had acted on the instructions of Ukrainian intelligence. Unofficial Telegram channels have identified the victim as Robert Shageiev, a former Ukrainian naval officer who defected to the Russian side during the 2014 annexation of Crimea. On 1 August, a bomb had exploded in a restaurant in central Moscow, killing three people and injuring twenty-one: according to several independent Russian sources, the target was Colonel-General Aleksandr Chaiko, commander of the Aerospace Forces since last May, who was celebrating his 55th birthday at the restaurant.

On 6 February, in Moscow, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, first deputy head of the GRU, was shot and wounded in the entrance hall of his own building by an assassin disguised as a delivery man: Sergei Lavrov accused Volodymyr Zelensky of ordering the ambush to derail the negotiations, an accusation rejected by Kyiv.  On 22 December 2025, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the General Staff’s Operational Training Directorate, was killed when a bomb planted under the chassis of his car exploded on Yaseneva Street, in the southern part of the capital. The previous April, Ukraine had claimed responsibility for the killing of Lieutenant-General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, who was blown up along with his car on the outskirts of Moscow, and in December 2024, for the killing of Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, head of the radiological, chemical and bacteriological defence forces, who was killed along with his assistant by a device concealed in an electric scooter outside the front door of his home. Earlier still, in July 2023, submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky had been shot dead whilst out for a morning run in Krasnodar.