MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. The former officer of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), Vasily Prozorov, who has been speaking out against the Kiev regime, has been injured in a car explosion in the north of Moscow.
The man is receiving medical treatment, and the investigative bodies have launched a criminal probe.
TASS has compiled the key information about the incident.
Car explosion
An explosion occurred in a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado off-road vehicle parked on Korovinskoye highway in the north of Moscow, when the driver started the SUV.
The owner of the vehicle was injured in the blast. Later, operational services said that he was a former officer of the Ukrainian Security Service, who had moved to Russia before the start of the special military operation in Ukraine.
The injured man’s close people confirmed to TASS that Vasily Prozorov, a former SBU employee, had been injured in the car explosion. The source said that Prozorov feels normal and is receiving medical treatment.
Two nearby cars were damaged. The explosion caused no fire and no fuel was spilt.
Investigation into the incident
The Russian Investigative Committee’s department for Moscow said that a criminal probe has been launched.
Investigators and forensic experts alongside the operational services are examining the scene. A number of tests, including medical and ballistics ones, will be scheduled shortly.
The operational services said that several versions of the incident are being considered. According to one of them, an improvised explosive device went off, but some other possible versions are also being looked into.
Facts about Vasily Prozorov
Vasily Prozorov was an officer of the Ukrainian Security Service from 1999 to 2018, and he used to work at the SBU counterterrorism center.
He rose to fame in the run-up to the presidential election in Ukraine in March 2019, when at a press conference in Russia he disclosed the SBU’s operations in Ukraine in 2014-2018.
Prozorov is a steadfast critic of the Kiev regime. After the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue, he said at a press conference in Moscow that there were Ukrainian fingerprints on what happened and that the terrorists’ actions bore all the typical earmarks of assaults carried out by Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance.
Similar incidents
Journalist Darya Dugina was killed on August 20, 2022 when her car exploded outside Moscow. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said that a Ukrainian woman called Natalya Vovk and her underage daughter, Sofia Shaban, were involved in the attack, after which they made off to Estonia.
On April 2, 2023, military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin) was killed in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg. According to investigators, the assassination "was masterminded by Ukraine’s special services and their agents, including Russian opposition activists hiding abroad," as following their instructions, Darya Trepova, 26, had given a statuette fitted with explosives as a gift to Fomin.
On March 6, 2023, the FSB reported that an attempted assassination of Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian businessman and the chairman of the board of directors of the Tsargrad media group, had been thwarted. According to the FSB, the assassination was masterminded by the Ukrainian special services.
On May 6, 2023, the car of writer Zakhar Prilepin exploded in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, wounding the man and killing his associate Alexander Shubin. Alexander Permyakov, who was detained for suspected involvement in the crime, confessed that he was acting upon the Ukrainian security services’ instructions. He was charged with committing a terrorist act and the trafficking of explosives.
On December 6, 2023, former Verkhovna Rada member Ilya Kiva was gunned down in the Moscow Region. An unidentified attacker fired several shots at Kiva, who died on the spot. According to preliminary information, it was a contract killing, and the investigators are looking into a "Ukrainian trace" among other versions of the crime, a law enforcement source told TASS.