Sergei Zavorotny, a 72-year-old former spokesman to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, was hospitalized in serious condition on Friday after an explosion beneath his SUV in southern Moscow, The Moscow Times reported.
Russia’s Investigative Committee confirmed that Zavorotny was driving the vehicle when the blast occurred on Kirovogradskaya Ulitsa in the Chertanovo district. Passersby administered first aid at the scene before emergency services transported him to a Moscow hospital.
Investigators opened an attempted murder case following the incident. Kommersant reported that preliminary findings indicated a magnetic bomb had been attached beneath the SUV, adding that authorities are examining potential involvement by Ukrainian intelligence services. Ukraine issued no immediate comment on Friday.
The Moscow blast occurred one day after a car bomb killed a Russian serviceman in St. Petersburg. Local broadcaster 78.ru reported that the victim was a colonel in the Russian Aerospace Forces. Another Russian military officer was killed in a car explosion in the same St. Petersburg neighborhood in August.
During the Soviet period, Zavorotny served as a Latin American foreign correspondent for the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid after originating from the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk. He later became Azarov’s top aide and relocated to Russia following the 2014 Maidan Revolution that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych.
Following his relocation, Zavorotny voiced pro-Kremlin and anti-Western views. U.S. intelligence previously identified him as an officer in Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, according to a U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
At Moscow’s Biblio-Globus bookstore in 2018, Zavorotny debuted a co-authored book concerning the collapse of Yanukovych’s administration, depicting the 2014 developments as a capitulation to the U.S. State Department. A Ukrainian court subsequently sentenced Yanukovych to 13 years in prison in absentia for treason in 2019, and Kyiv placed sanctions on both Yanukovych and Azarov.
Commenting on the measures to Russia’s RBC newspaper, Zavorotny criticized the penalties against his former boss as emblematic of “a kind of Ukrainian-style McCarthyism, where local authorities simply ‘snap to attention’ and carry out the orders of their overseas supervisors.”
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Zavorotny presents book on Yanukovych downfall | Biblio-Globus bookstore, Moscow |
| 2019 | Yanukovych sentenced to 13 years in absentia | Kyiv, Ukraine |
| August | Russian military officer killed in car explosion | St. Petersburg |
