Ukraine war: Melitopol police chief killed in partisan attack

A police chief in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol, who defected to Russia after its capture of the city, has been killed in an apparently partisan bombing.

Oleksandr Mishchenko was killed when an explosive device exploded at the entrance of the building where he lived.

There have recently been reports of increased Ukrainian partisan activity in the region.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol said that the deceased officer was a traitor.

The city is located in Zaporizhia Province, one of four regions that Russia claimed it annexed last year after its invasion, despite only partially controlling it.

After Mariupol, Melitopol is the largest city in the Russian-occupied territories since February 2022.

The Russian Interior Ministry said the explosion occurred at 05:20 local time (02:20 GMT).

She added that two policemen were wounded and hospitalized, but one of them later died.

Video of the scene showed a crater next to an apartment building and nearby cars with broken windows.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel about the murder: “The course of every collaborator is expected: betrayal yesterday, panic today, massacre tomorrow.”

Before the invasion, he said, Mishchenko was the chief of the Priazovsky District Police Department, adding that he had not only defected, but “tricked his employees into becoming traitors.” It is not clear what Mr. Fedorov meant by these allegations.

At a later job, he appoints the second policeman as Yuri Akimov, Mishchenko’s assistant and driver.

He said that the police had arrested “a girl standing at a bus stop” over the incident, suggesting that they were unable to find the real culprits.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian newspaper “Ukranska Pravda” published a video clip showing a man with a masked voice and features claiming responsibility for the explosion.

The man was seen saying, “Sorry for the loud noise this morning, we were taking out the trash, ie eliminating Judas Oleksandr Mitchenko.”

He went on to warn other collaborators that they faced the same fate.

Volodymyr Rogov, a Russian official in the Zaporizhia region, said that Mishchenko was threatened several times by “terrorists” in order to “restore peace in the region, prevent illegal actions, and create order in his native land.”

In the past year, a number of Russian officials have been killed in attacks in occupied territories, including the Zaporizhia region.

Among them was Oleh Boyko, the deputy mayor of Berdyansk, who died with his wife in September in an apparent assassination.

A number of Russian officials were killed in the southern city of Kherson last year by partisan activity before the successful Ukrainian offensive that captured the city.