Updated to include Podolyak’s comments.
Law enforcement authorities in Moscow are investigating a car explosion that injured two people on Wednesday, a police spokeswoman said, with Russian media reporting that a senior defense ministry official was targeted in the blast.
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said two people were injured in the explosion at a parking lot on the north side of Moscow. According to her, the blast was caused by a device placed under a vehicle.
“The injured were taken by ambulance to a medical facility,” Volk said in a statement. “Police officers are carrying out a complex of operational search measures aimed at establishing all the circumstances of the incident, as well as detaining persons involved in the carrying out the crime.”
A video shared by news channels on Telegram showed an explosion ripping through an SUV shortly after a man got into the vehicle.
The Kommersant business daily, citing anonymous law enforcement sources, reported that the two people injured in Wednesday’s explosion were GRU military intelligence officer Andrei Torgashev and his wife. According to those sources, Torgashev was hospitalized and in critical condition after both of his legs were blown off in the blast.
The Telegram news channel Astra reported that Torgashev serves as deputy chief of a Moscow region-based unit that is part of the Russian Armed Forces’ satellite communications center.
Moscow region broadcaster 360.ru later reported that it had spoken with Torgashev’s wife, who denied her husband was injured in the attack and said someone else was inside the vehicle when the bomb went off. Likewise, the Kremlin-funded RT network claimed Torhashev himself denied he was injured.
It was not immediately possible to verify either of the reports.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, announced that it had launched a criminal investigation into Wednesday’s explosion, which, according to reporting by Kommersant, was being treated as attempted murder. The newspaper said police may turn the case into a terrorist investigation.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak later on Wednesday told independent Russian media that Kyiv “had nothing to do with” the car explosion in Moscow earlier in the day.
“As far as I know, there was a malfunction with the gas equipment in the car,” Podolyak said.
A number of car explosions have rocked Russia since the Kremlin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
The daughter of conservative Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin was killed in a bomb attack in the summer of 2022, with Moscow laying the blame on Ukraine. And in May 2023, prominent pro-Kremlin writer and Russian nationalist Zakhar Prilepin was injured in a car blast in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
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