Konstantin Nagayko (R). Photo: Ukraine’s military intelligence
A Russian military commander with links to a unit deemed responsible for launching multiple missile strikes on Ukraine was severely injured and is now “near death” following an explosion in the central Russian region of Ivanovo, Ukraine’s military intelligence reported on Saturday.
The agency did not specify what caused the blast that injured Captain Konstantin Nagayko, who is the 112th Missile Brigade of the Russian Western Military District’s battery commander, saying only that Nagayko had sustained “multiple shrapnel injuries” while “on duty in his military unit” when “an explosion occurred in the village of Shuya”.
According to Ukrainian military intelligence, Nagayko’s unit was responsible for launching a deadly missile strike on the Ukrainian village of Hroza in October 2023 that killed 59 Ukrainian civilians attending a wake at a cafe. The unit has also been linked to numerous Russian ballistic missile strikes on civilian and military targets in Ukraine’s eastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
The Russian Defence Ministry has not yet commented on the reported blast.
On 17 December, Igor Kirillov, a high-ranking Russian general who headed Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed when an explosive device hidden in a scooter exploded outside his house in Moscow.
While Vladimir Putin condemned the incident as a “terrorist attack” two days later, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine told BBC News Russian that Kirillov had been a “war criminal” and was thus “an absolutely legitimate target”, before confirming that the explosive device that killed him had been planted in a Ukrainian intelligence operation.
