Crimea bomb attack reportedly kills former Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — A bomb attack in Crimea has reportedly killed a former Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed the peninsula.

Russian authorities said a Russian military officer had been killed in a targeted attack in Sevastopol, Crimea’s biggest city, and that a woman has subsequently been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack. They did not name the officer targeted.

However, unofficial Telegram channels identified the officer as Robert Shageev who they say is a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine, the Zaporizhzhia, and who switched allegiance to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea.

Back in 2014, a Ukraine defense ministry spokesperson told CNN that the Zaporizhzhia had been taken over and placed under the flag of the Russian naval fleet when its commander abandoned it.

The suspect was acting “on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence agencies,” Sevastopol’s governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram. Ukraine has not publicly commented on the attack.

The bomb had been planted in a trash can in a park off Stoletovsky Prospekt, a busy road in western Sevastopol, and was detonated remotely by the suspect when the officer passed by, said the state-run TV channel Russia 24, citing the country’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Russian authorities have blamed Ukraine for several other assassinations including those of two Russian generals in Moscow in April and December 2025, respectively.

Five other people – four Russian service members and one security guard – were killed in a separate explosion in Sevastopol too, Razvozhayev said on Thursday. They were trying to clear an area of Ukrainian bombs following an attack when one exploded, he said.

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