The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has claimed responsibility for an explosion that seriously injured the head of customs of the so-called “Luhansk People's Republic” (LPR), Kyiv Post has been told.
The special operation targeted Yuriy Afanasievsky in his own apartment. As a result, he reportedly received multiple shrapnel wounds to the head, neck, and abdomen and is said to be in intensive care in critical condition.
An SBU source told Kyiv Post Afanasievsky was put in place as a Russian proxy with the rank of major general and acts an agent for the central apparatus of Moscow’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
In this role he is known for both being the main “financier” of the chairman of the so-called LPR Leonid Pasichnyk and for using “laundered” money to fund paramilitary groups fighting against Ukraine, the source said.
The SBU contact, using military terminology, expressed the hope that “in the near future his status will change from ‘cargo-300’ [wounded casualty] to ‘cargo-200’ [fatal casualty].”
Afanasievsky is the subject of personal sanctions imposed by the EU, UK, Canada, Switzerland, and Japan.