(Reuters) – A Russian-installed governor of Crimea vowed on Monday to take revenge on “terrorists” who killed a high-ranking Russian navy captain last week in a hit claimed by Ukraine’s security services.
Valery Trankovsky, chief of staff of Russia’s 41st missile ship brigade in the Black Sea, died in a car bomb attack in the port of Sevastopol on Wednesday at the age of 47.
A Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) source told Reuters last week that kyiv considered Trankovsky a “legitimate” target under the laws of war because of the “war crimes” he had committed, including by ordering missile attacks against civilian targets in 2007. Ukraine.
Mikhail Razvojaev, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, said those who ordered his death would pay a heavy price.
“Non-humans who dared to do this are waiting for an obvious end,” Razvozhayev said in a message on Telegram. “Because all terrorists suffer the same fate.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates serious crimes, said in a statement Wednesday that an improvised explosive device detonated during an act of terrorism, killing a serviceman. He did not identify Trankovsky by name.
Trankovsky, a native of Soviet Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, studied radio electronics and later entered the Black Sea Fleet, before graduating from a naval academy in his hometown.
Several pro-war Russian figures have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine in operations blamed by Moscow on kyiv, including journalist Daria Dugina, war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and former submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky.
The city of Sevastopol is the traditional headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and was heavily targeted by Ukrainian strikes during the conflict.
(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Lucy Papachristou, editing by William Maclean)
