MOSCOW – All died far from the front lines in circumstances unrelated to military action. They died in elaborate ambushes, car bomb attacks and, in one case, a booby-trapped elevator. The latest died on Feb. 8 in an explosion in his office.
The staccato of about half a dozen assassinations of commanders in the Russian-backed separatist army in eastern Ukraine has become one of the riddles of the war there since 2015, when the first unexplained killings of Cossack militia leaders occurred.
