Ukraine's military spy agency has claimed responsibility for the assassination of a Russia-backed politician with a car bomb in the occupied eastern city of Luhansk, an operation it says it conducted with local resistance forces.
Mikhail Filiponenko, a legislator in a Russia-installed local assembly, had been active in Luhansk's pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014.
He had served as one of the top commanders in the army of the so-called Luhansk People's Republic.
The agency said Filiponenko was eliminated in an early morning explosion.
He died at the site, it added on Telegram messenger.
It accused him of organising dungeons for civilians and prisoners of war in Luhansk region.
"Filiponenko himself brutally tortured people," agency said, giving no details.
The spy agency published the address at which it claimed Filiponenko lived and warned that it knew "all addresses of traitors" living in the occupied territories.
In September, Filiponenko was elected to the regional parliament in a vote that drew widespread international condemnation.
Bomb blasts targeting senior Russian-installed officials in occupied parts of Ukraine have been a regular occurrence since Russia ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Luhansk is one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexed in September last year, despite not exerting full military control over them.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday Ukraine would still try to deliver battlefield results by the end of the year.
Acknowledging the slow progress of Ukraine's counteroffensive in the occupied south in an interview by video link at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York, he also touted a Ukrainian battlefield plan for 2024 that he said he could not disclose.
"We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very (concrete) directions where we go. I can't share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east," he said.
"And some, I think good steps... near Kherson region. I am sure we'll have success. It's difficult."
Ukrainian forces have been trying to establish a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the vast Dnipro river in Kherson region, swathes of which were liberated in Ukraine's last rapid counteroffensive almost exactly a year ago.
Zelenskiy emphasised the need for Ukrainians to remain united, something he said other countries could help with as the war grinds on with a winter of air strikes looming and questions swirling over the sustainability of foreign military aid.
Careful to make clear Ukraine was deeply grateful for foreign military assistance, without which he said Ukraine could not keep up battlefield results, he added that decisions on providing that support were "sometimes made a bit slow".
He spoke hours after the European Union's executive published a report on Ukraine's progress towards membership, recommending the trade bloc's members agree to launch accession talks once conditions are met.
He said the report had made Wednesday a "successful day" for Ukraine and sent a "very important signal," noting that the government had "done a lot" of anti-corruption reform that was crucial not only for the country's EU bid.
"The reforms are also fighting with the old system. First of all we do it for us, for our people, we need it," he said.
with EFE
