Ukraine takes credit for blowing up Putin ally in car bomb

Ukraine admitted blowing up a Russia-backed politician in a car bomb Wednesday, calling it retribution for a “war criminal” and “executioner.”

Mikhail Filiponenko, a deputy in the pro-Moscow Lugansk regional parliament and a former police chief, was killed in the early morning explosion — having survived a previous blast in February 2022, days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Photos from the scene showed a mangled dark-colored SUV with blood smeared across the backseat and coating the side of the vehicle.

Within hours, Ukraine’s military spy agency confirmed it was responsible for having eliminated Filiponenko in a joint operation with local “resistance” forces.

Filiponenko was targeted as a “war criminal” and “executioner” who ran “torture camps” in Luhansk where prisoners of war and even civilians suffered “inhumane” treatment, the intelligence agency claimed.

“Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people,” the spy agency claimed.  

The assassination was called a warning that “traitors to Ukraine and collaborators with terrorist Russia in temporarily occupied territories … will receive just retribution!

“The hunt continues!,” Kyiv’s intelligence operatives said.

Filiponenko had been involved in Luhansk’s pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014. He had served as one of the top commanders in the army of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, which Kyiv has designated a terrorist organization.

Filiponenko had survived a previous car bombing on Feb. 21, 2022, three days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

In September, Filiponenko was elected to the regional parliament as a member of Russia’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party in a vote that drew widespread international condemnation.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a probe into Filiponenko’s killing, which it classified as an “act of terror.”

Leonid Pasechnik, the Moscow-installed head of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, hailed Filiponenko as a “real man” whose death was a “heavy loss.”

“We lost a smart, kind, positive person, a real patriot of the Luhansk homeland and its brave defender,” Pasechnik wrote in a Telegram post.

Russia had previously accused Ukraine’s special services of orchestrating the car bombing that killed pro-Kremlin journalist Daria Dugina near Moscow last year and the assassination of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a St. Petersburg café in April.

Ukraine typically denies or does not comment on such allegations.