Russia's Shadow War Comes Home: Car Bombings Target Moscow-Linked Figures in Escalating Covert Campaign

Two car bombings in two days — one killing a military officer in St Petersburg, another critically injuring a pro-Russia Ukrainian expat in Moscow — mark an acceleration of targeted assassinations that neither side officially claims.

Two car bombings in 48 hours have struck targets on Russian soil, escalating a covert assassination campaign that has shadowed the conventional war in Ukraine for over three years. On Thursday, a bomb killed a military serviceman in St Petersburg — reportedly a senior air force colonel. On Friday, a similar device critically injured Sergei Zavorotnyi, 72, a former adviser to ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, as he drove through Moscow. Both devices were planted beneath vehicles and triggered remotely, a signature consistent with earlier attacks Moscow attributes to Ukrainian intelligence.

Zavorotnyi is an unusual target. He is not a Russian military figure but a Ukrainian expat aligned with the deposed Yanukovych government — a journalist-turned-political-operative who wrote a book defending Yanukovych's ouster narrative and ran an online outlet critical of Kyiv. His former boss Azarov, who fled to Russia in 2014 after the Maidan revolution toppled Yanukovych, told state TV he believes the attack was retaliation for Zavorotnyi's public criticism of Ukrainian authorities. Russia's REN TV reported Zavorotnyi lost his left arm, sustained multiple injuries, and was in a coma. The St Petersburg attack killed an unidentified military serviceman. Russia's Investigative Committee confirmed the death but withheld the victim's name and rank. The Fontanka news outlet identified the victim as a colonel; other Russian media specified a senior air force officer. Al Jazeera's correspondent noted preliminary reports pointed to a serviceman rather than a confirmed air force colonel, leaving the victim's exact role in the war ambiguous. These bombings sit within a now-familiar pattern. Since 2022, a string of car bombings, shootings, and drone attacks have killed or injured figures linked to Russia's war effort — from ultranationalist commentator Darya Dugina to military bloggers to occupation officials. Moscow consistently blames Kyiv. Ukraine consistently declines to comment. The operational signature — remotely detonated IEDs placed under vehicles — has become a calling card. The strategic logic is asymmetric warfare at its most classical. Ukraine lacks the conventional capacity to project force deep into Russian territory at scale, but targeted killings impose psychological costs disproportionate to their operational investment. Every bombing forces Russian security services to expand protective details, generates domestic anxiety, and signals that participation in the war — whether military or propagandistic — carries personal risk. The inclusion of a political propagandist alongside a military officer widens the implied target set. Moscow's response follows a script: the Investigative Committee opens a criminal case, state media attributes blame to Kyiv without presenting evidence, and the cycle resets. The absence of arrests or detailed forensic disclosures suggests either genuine investigative failure or a calculated decision to use the attacks as narrative ammunition rather than solve them. For the Kremlin, unsolved bombings blamed on Ukraine serve domestic mobilization purposes. The 20-year question is whether this normalization of targeted killing on Russian soil outlasts the war itself. Covert assassination campaigns, once established as acceptable tradecraft, tend to persist and proliferate. The infrastructure — operatives, supply chains, targeting methodology — does not dismantle cleanly when hostilities end. Russia and Ukraine are building institutional muscle memory for a form of conflict that will be difficult to turn off.