Ukraine has claimed the assassination by shooting of a Russian missile scientist in a Moscow suburbs park this week, just days after a car bombing killed a pro-Russian Ukrainian public official in occupied Donetsk.
Ukraine’s intelligence services claimed responsibility for the killing of Mikhail Shatsky, a Russian missile designer, who is claimed to have been found shot dead in the snow at a Forest park near Kotelniki in the Moscow suburbs. Shatsky is said to have worked at the Mars Design Bureau as Deputy Chief Designer and head of software development, working on improving Russian missile and drone designs used to strike Ukraine.
Kyiv state media cites intelligence service sources who say Shatsky was “liquidated” or “eliminated” by their agents. One spy agency insider told the a state broadcaster: “We remind you that every person who is somehow involved in the development of the Russian military-industrial complex and thus supports Russian aggression against Ukraine is a legitimate target for the Defense Forces”.
Russian state media has not yet confirmed the claims, but footage purporting to show Shatsky’s body and an arriving ambulance crew has circulated on Russian social media.
After Boasting it Had Stopped Sabotage, Russia Again Hit With Railway Bomb https://t.co/HHIXV4TfUW
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 19, 2023
Among the projects Shatsky was responsible for, it is reported, was upgrading the 1990s-vintage Kh-59′ Kingbolt’ land-attack cruise missile into the Kh-69. The latest generation Kh-69 is presently in development and has been described by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London as being an analogue to the highly successful British Storm Shadow missiles donated to Ukraine.
The assassination by Ukraine’s security services followed by days another such erasure of a pro-Kremlin figure when a former Ukrainian prison governor who had supported Russia-basked separatists in 2014 was killed in a car bombing. Sergei Yevsyukov was killed by 100 grams of high explosives under his SUV in Donetsk, occupied Ukraine and his wife lost a leg.
Yevsyukov was accused of war crimes in his prison where it is claimed Ukrainian prisoners were systematically tortured, the facility later allegedly being being bombed to cover up the evidence.
These assassinations are just the latest in a line of such “liquidations” by the Ukrainian state taking out what it calls traitors and collaborators. Last month, a senior naval officer accused of war crimes was assassinated in Sevastopol, Crimea, also taken out with a car bomb. Russia confirmed the killing, calling it a terrorist attack. As noted at the time: “Russian media reported that the explosion tore off Trankovsky’s legs and he died from blood loss”.
In October, a high-ranking Russian officer involved in the special operations forces was assassinated just days after returning to Moscow from the Ukraine front lines. Nikita Klenkov was shot through his car window by a lurking gunman who was able to escape.
Ukraine Assassinates Former Politician Who Criticized Zelensky: ‘Traitor, Collaborator’https://t.co/MRCbeMDRGI
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 6, 2023
Just days before that, the head of security at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was another victim to a Ukrainian car bomb. Kyiv claimed the assassination, calling Andriy Korotkyy a war criminal who had been “involved in the organization and execution of war crimes and repression of Ukrainians under occupation”, making the slaying justified “retribution”.
In April, a Moscow-loyal Ukrainian official “collaborator” in occupied Luhansk who ran the state education agency was killed by a car bomb. He was accused of allowing Russian propaganda into children’s classrooms.
Formerly reasonably mainstream pre-war Ukrainian politicians have been the subject of liquidations too. In December 2023, Ilya Kiva — who had been a member of Parliament in the Ukrainian Rada until the wartime purge of dissenting lawmakers under martial law — was shot in the head. The Ukrainian intelligence services called him a “top traitor, collaborator and propagandist… criminal” and claimed the assassination.
The month before in November 2023 Ukraine also claimed the killing of Mikhail Filiponenko of occupied Luhansk, also a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker. Ukrainian intelligence said: “He was involved in the organization of torture camps in the occupied territories of the Luhansk region, where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were subjected to inhumane torture. Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people” and said he was blown up in a car bomb by partisans.
In some cases, the means of collecting intelligence on assassination targets by Ukrainian spies is very characteristically modern. When Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky was shot dead while jogging in Krasnodar it is stated he may have been tracked by GPS fitness app Strava.
