(Photos) President Putin’s official killed in car bomb blast

A car bomb has killed a Russian leader in charge of a town in Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia region, days after the daughter of a prominent Russian ultranationalist died in a similar fashion at the weekend.

Ivan Sushko, a 40-year-old father-of-one, died this morning, August 24,  when a car bomb detonated under his seat, according to Vladimir Rogov, a representative of the local Russian-proxy administration.

Rogov announced on Telegram that Sushko was rushed to a hospital in critical condition after the blast, but he succumbed to his injuries there. 

It was reported that Sushko was taking his daughter to a nursery at the time of the explosion.

The child is not thought to have sustained life-threatening injuries, but this has not been verified. 

Sushko was installed as head of the Mykhailivka ‘military-civilian administration’ by occupying Russian forces in May, in the region where Europe’s largest nuclear plant is under siege. 

Putin loyalist Rogov said the attack was carried out by ‘saboteurs’ in the region, and vowed to track them down, claiming Ukraine was attacking Russian-backed officials who ‘help improve the lives of ordinary people’.

Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on the bombing, but President Volodymyr Zelensky has strongly denied his agents carried out the assassination of Darya Dugina, 29, the daughter of ‘Putin’s Rasputin’, at the weekend.

He rejected any link to Natalia Shaban-Vovk, a 43-year-old mother who Russia says acted for Kyiv’s SBU secret service, going so far as to claim she is not even a Ukrainian citizen.

‘This is definitely not our responsibility,’ he said. ‘She is not a citizen of our country.

‘She is of no interest to us. She is not on the territory of Ukraine or the occupied territory of Ukraine.’

Russia says Dugina, daughter of ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin , a man described as the brains behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine died a ‘martyr’ when she was killed in a car bombing in Moscow.

The FSB secret service in Moscow immediately pinned the killing on Ukraine, pointing to Shaban-Vovk as the alleged assassin.

This article was updated 8 months ago