Oleg Anashchenko, a military commander of the Russian-backed separatists based in the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, was killed by a car bomb early on Feb. 4 in his parked car in the city center.
Another person was also killed in Anashchenko’s Toyota Jeep, separatist officials reported without naming the casualty.
The separatists blamed the Ukrainian security forces for 48-year-old Anashchenko’s murder.
“We presume the Ukrainian security forces committed this terror attack to destabilize the situation in the republic,” Andrey Marochko, a separatist military representative said referring to the unrecognized separatist republic in the south of Luhansk Oblast.
The Russian-backed Luhansk separatists claimed independence from Ukraine in May 2014 and launched a military campaign against Ukrainian forces with the help of Russian troops. The campaign soon degenerated into a war that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives.
In 2015, Anashchenko was the commander of an air defense unit of the Luhansk separatist forces and then of their training center. Since 2016, he served as a top commander of the so-called “People’s Militia,” the name of the armed forces of the Luhansk separatists.
Anashchenko’s killing is just one in a string of suspicious deaths and assassination attempts of separatist leaders.
Valeriy Bolotov, the first head of the Luhansk separatist republic, died from a heart attack in late January in Moscow at the age of 46. The current head of the breakaway republic Igor Plotnitsky narrowly survived after his car was blown up in August, 2016. Arseniy Pavlov (also known as “Motorola”), a notorious warlord of the Donetsk separatists was killed by a blast in the elevator of his apartment block in October, 2016.
The front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine have witnessed fierce fighting since Jan. 29. Eleven civilians have been killed by shells on either side, Reuters reported on Feb. 2, citing Ukrainian and separatist officials. At least 10 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, three of whom in the last 24 hours, according to Ukraine’s ministry of defense.
Military forces on both sides of the conflict are using Grad multiple rocket launchers and tanks, prohibited under the Minsk peace deal, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring mission.
