You're reading: Car bomb in Donetsk injures top official of Russian occupying authorities

Two blasts ripped through central Donetsk early on Sept. 23, with reports soon coming from the Russian-occupied city that a senior official in the Kremlin-installed authorities there had been targeted by a car bomb.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti later reported that the official, Oleksandr Timofeev, a Donetsk warlord who goes by the nom-de-guerre “Tashkent,” had been critically injured in the blast, and seven other people had been injured. The blast occurred at 8.30 a.m., the Russian agency reported.

However, subsequent reports from the press service of the pseudo authorities in Donetsk indicated that Timofeev had only been lightly injured.

Earlier reports from the city indicated that Russian-led forces had cordoned off part of Prospekt Myr in central Donetsk.

As independent journalists are not permitted to report from the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas, it is impossible to verify these reports.

Timofeev was the so-called “revenues and tax minister” of the Kremlin-installed authorities in Donetsk, having been appointed to the post in November 2014. Earlier, in May 2014, he fought for Russian-led forces at battles for control of Donetsk International Airport. He was also the commander of the headquarters of Oplot, a Russian-led fighting group.

There have been rumors in recent weeks that the Kremlin was seeking to replace the leaders of the groups that have seized control of parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Oleksandr Zakharchenko and Ihor Plotnytskiy.

Timofeev, seen as the second most senior leader in Donetsk, was rumored to be positioning himself to replace Zakharchenko.

After news of the apparent assassination attempt on Timofeev broke, the pro-Kremlin political analyst Konstantin Dolgov wrote on his Telegram social media channel that Timofeev had indeed set himself the goal of replacing Zakharchenko.

Dolgov also wrote on his Facebook page that what had happened to “Tashkent” was “absolutely normal.”

“In businesses, on the eve of an audit inspection, as a rule, there is a fire. This allows you to hide any shortfalls,” Dolgov wrote.

“And in some cases it helps the business owner himself to escape as well.”