WATCH: Car Bomb Injures SBU Defector in Moscow

Russian Telegram channels reported on Friday that a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado belonging to Vasily Prozorov, a former Lt. Col. from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), was blown up as he started the vehicle in a parking lot on Moscow’s Korovinskoye Highway.

Dramatic video showed the moment the SUV exploded, leaving the defector with wounds to his arm and leg requiring him to be hospitalized.

Prozorov, 48, was an officer of the SBU until 2018, when he defected to Russia. In a 2019 press conference in Moscow, he said that he had been collaborating with Russia “for ideological reasons,” passing information relating to Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operations in the Donbas following the 2014 partial annexation by Moscow.

During the same event Prozorov accused the SBU of building a “secret prison” near Mariupol and claiming that Ukraine had been responsible for the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence operative and two other accomplices were found guilty of the attack on the aircraft by a Dutch court in 2022.

The SBU has said that Prozorov was a traitor and a liar who had been sacked “for professional misconduct,” including “systematic alcohol consumption at the workplace” and for discrediting his office.

Prozorov's car was left badly damaged following the explosion, with a side door detached from the body of the car, and parts of the vehicle scattered around damaging nearby vehicles.

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Initial comments made on social media and on site suggested the blast may have been caused by a gas leak. Once Prozorov had been identified as the victim, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a criminal case investigating the case as an assassination attempt, according to Telegram channel 112.