The separatists blamed Kyiv for the spate of killings – a suspected bomb blast, a missile strike and a double assassination – and said Ukraine was waging a campaign of terror and “bloody crimes” behind front lines in territory controlled by pro-backed forces. Russia and Russia. In the city of Luhansk, a bomb blast killed the Prosecutor General of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), Sergei Gorenko, and his deputy, Ekaterina Steglenko, in their offices, Russian-appointed LPR administrator Leonid Pasechnik. he said on the Telegram messaging app. He blamed Kyiv for the attack and called Ukraine a “terrorist state” under its current leadership. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Twitter that the deaths of Gorenko and Steglenko were either the result of organized crime or a possible purge by Russian witnesses of “war crimes” in the region. Ukraine has previously said it would target “collaborators” working for or with Russian-installed administrations in cities and regions seized by Russian forces either before or after Moscow’s large-scale invasion in February. In southern Ukraine, Russian-settled officials said two local officials were killed overnight in a “double murder,” which they also blamed on Ukraine. Oleg Boyko, deputy head of the Berdyansk city administration, and his wife, Lyudmila, who headed a committee preparing a referendum on Zaporizhia province joining Russia, were killed in their garage Friday night, the administration said. city. There are no details on the circumstances of the death and Reuters was unable to verify the reports. Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian administration in the occupied parts of Zaporizhzia province, said in a statement addressed to Kyiv that the attackers were “stupid cowards with the blood of innocent people on your hands.” The story continues A third attack – a rocket attack on the local government headquarters in Russian-held Kherson in southern Ukraine – destroyed a wing of the building, injuring administration officials and killing at least one person, separatist officials said. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv on the attacks. Moscow says what it calls a “special military operation” was necessary to prevent Ukraine from being used as a platform for Western aggression and to defend Russian-speakers. Kyiv and its Western allies reject these arguments as flimsy pretexts for an imperial-style war of aggression. (Reporting by Reuters Editing by Paul Simao)
