Partisans in Enerhodar – pro-Russia official, bodyguards injured in bomb attack

A partisan bombing in the Russian Federation (RF)-occupied city Enerhodar injured a pro-Moscow official and hospitalized him and his bodyguards, news reports and official statements on Monday said.

Andriy Shevchuk, 48, the current head of the RF military administration and occupying authority in the south Ukrainian city, was hit by a May 22 morning blast set off in the entrance of the apartment building where he lived, said Dmitriy Orlov, the mayor-in-exile of Enerhodar, according to Ukrainian independent and RF-controlled state media.

The explosion blew out the doors of the entrance, broke open interior walls, and flying debris damaged at least two automobiles parked nearby, images from scene published by the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia regional administration showed. Aside from Shevchuk and his protection detail, no one was injured, the statement said.

The pro-Russia Readovka news platform said the bomb detonated at 09:30 A.M. in the entrance stairwell of the apartment building. The report described Shevchuk as Enerhodar’s “lawful mayor” and the attackers as “a Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) sabotage team”.

Orlov said Shevchuk and his bodyguard detail suffered “injuries of varying degrees”, and that his administration’s police were searching for red Audi automobile and two men thought to have been involved in the attack.

According to the Zaporizhzhia statement, Shevchuk prior to the war had been a member of the pro-Russia Ukrainian political party “Opposition Party for Life (OPL)”. Ukraine’s parliament banned OPL in April, citing its purported deep links to and financing from the Kremlin.

Site of a major hydroelectric plant and a nuclear power facility, Enerhodar is a critical note in Ukraine’s power grid.

Occupied by RF forces in the early days of the war, Ukraine’s southern territories containing the cities Enerhodar, Kherson and Melitopol have seen repeated attacks against RF officials and infrastructure. UAF officials have claimed the region contains an active partisan movement with hundreds of pro-Ukraine guerrillas.

On May 18 explosives set by unknown persons blasted an RF armored train halted in the rail station of the city Melitopol, damaging tracks and setting afire an adjacent fuel train.

In Kherson, a port city claimed by the Ukrainian government to be an active center of anti-RF underground activity, on May 11 posters appeared on walls and lamp posts offering a Hr 500,000 ($17,000) reward to anyone able to deliver alive Kirill Stremousov, the vice head of town occupying authority, to the UAF.

According to both RF-controlled and independent Ukrainian news sources, unknown persons in April assassinated in Kherson pro-Russia blogger Valery Kuleshov.