A man was killed Thursday morning in an explosion in Russian-occupied Sevastopol. Russia’s FSB office for Crimea and Sevastopol said the device, planted in a trash bin near a bench on Stoletovsky Avenue, killed a Russian Defense Ministry serviceman, and that a woman born in 1994 was detained shortly afterward, accused by the agency of acting on orders from Ukrainian special services, according to RIA Novosti. The FSB did not name the victim.
Unofficial Russian and Ukrainian sources, including Telegram channels VChK-OGPU and Crimean Wind, identified him as Robert Shageev, a Captain 1st Rank who commanded a Kilo-class (Project 636) submarine crew in the Black Sea Fleet’s 4th Independent Submarine Brigade at Novorossiysk — a role Ukraine says tied him to Kalibr cruise-missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Shageev previously commanded the Ukrainian Navy submarine Zaporizhzhia before defecting after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, according to Meduza. Neither his identity nor his exact submarine command role has been officially confirmed by Russian or Ukrainian authorities.
The killing fits a recurring pattern, unclaimed by Kyiv, in which Russian-aligned commanders and defectors in occupied Crimea have been targeted in bombings widely attributed to Ukrainian intelligence-linked operations — though no Ukrainian agency has claimed responsibility for this attack.
