Russian colonel killed in St. Petersburg car bombing, three months after another military officer’s car was blown up in the same area
A Russian serviceman died when his car was blown up in St. Petersburg’s Pushkin District, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. The agency opened a criminal case over the murder but did not disclose the specific charge. Investigators also have not yet released other details about what happened.
The explosion happened around 7 a.m. on November 12 on Kolpinskoye Highway in the Slavyanka neighborhood of Shushary, the St. Petersburg-based news outlet Fontanka reported. The serviceman was alone in the car and had driven about 300 meters (984 feet) when the device went off. It is believed to have been attached to the vehicle’s undercarriage and detonated remotely.
A passenger bus nearby had its windows blown out by the blast. According to data from Fontanka, 30 to 40 people were on board and no one was injured. Authorities shut down traffic on Kolpinskoye Highway near the explosion site.
The person killed in the explosion has not been officially identified. Fontanka said it was a colonel. The TV channel “78” reported (1, 2) that the colonel was 51 years old and served in the 6th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense. He is survived by a wife and two children. The colonel’s wife said that after previous bombings, her husband had regularly checked his car.
According to one version, the person killed may have been Dmitry Lobodin, chief navigator of the 6th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense. The independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo found in leaked data that the home where he is registered is located 400 meters (1,312 feet) from the explosion site. According to another version, the victim was Andrei Khodykin, deputy commander of the 6th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense for military-political work. Leaked data show he also lived in the area where the explosion occurred. The Ukrainian project Kniga Palachei “Book of Executioners” said both servicemen participate in Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
According to data from Fontanka, the suspect in the bombing is a 31-year-old St. Petersburg resident who worked at the Lenta supermarket and had been tailing the serviceman for at least a month. He reportedly left Russia for Turkey, then left that country as well.
The colonel’s car exploded in the same area where the car of another serviceman, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Sechkov of an Air Force and Air Defense unit, was blown up in late August. His wife was injured in that blast. Fontanka said the colonel’s car exploded half a kilometer (0.3 miles) from the site of the Sechkov explosion.
The suspect in the bombing of Sechkov’s car is a 24-year-old Russian woman. According to an investigative account circulated by St. Petersburg media, representatives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine proposed that she plant the bomb and leave for Ukraine. She could not be detained and reportedly left for Moldova via Turkey after the explosion.
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