A bomb has exploded in the lobby of a luxury apartment block in Moscow, killing a pro-Russia paramilitary leader from eastern Ukraine alongside his bodyguard.
The bomb detonated just as a man with bodyguards entered the lobby of the Scarlet Sails residential complex on the banks of the Moscow River on Monday, Russian media reported.
Russia’s Tass news agency, citing security services, reported that the blast was an attack on Armen Sarkisyan, the head of the boxing federation in Russian-occupied Donetsk and the founder of a battalion fighting against Ukraine. Sarkisyan, who is wanted in Ukraine, has a long history of aiding pro-Russia forces in Ukraine.
The bomb was likely to have been hidden in a couch at the building’s entrance, according to Russian media. Russian security services stated that it was detonated remotely, with the attacker waiting for Sarkisyan to enter the lobby.
Sarkisyan was taken to hospital in critical condition and he later succumbed to his injuries, while his bodyguard was killed instantly, Tass said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, which Russian security services described as a targeted and “well-planned” assassination.
Ukraine has targeted dozens of Russian military officers and Russian-installed officials whom Kyiv has accused of committing war crimes in the country. Little is known, however, about the clandestine Ukrainian resistance cells involved in assassinations and attacks on military infrastructure in Russia and Russian-controlled areas.
News agencies published footage from the lobby of the building in north-west Moscow, showing a heavily damaged hall, a blown-out door and broken glass.
According to Ukrainian media, Kyiv issued an international arrest warrant for Sarkisyan in 2014 over violence against pro-EU protesters during the Maidan uprising. Ukrainian security services describe him as a “criminal authority” with connections to the former president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia in 2014.
Sarkisyan gained further attention in Russia as the founder of the Arbat battalion, one of many irregular Russian military units that have fought alongside the Russian army since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
He was born to Armenian parents in Horlivka, a city in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
In a Telegram post commemorating his death, Horlivka’s mayor wrote that Sarkisyan’s “most important accomplishment was the creation and leadership of a separate special forces battalion”.
Sarkisyan mostly recruited fellow ethnic Armenians for the Arbat battalion, which numbered about 500 soldiers. Ukraine’s security services say the paramilitary group has fought in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s Kursk region.
If claimed by Kyiv, the attack would mark the latest operation by Ukraine’s SBU security service deep behind enemy lines – one aimed at sowing panic and fear among senior Kremlin and military figures.
“Ukraine carried out a terrorist attack in the super-elite complex Alye Parusa [Scarlet Sails]. This is how Ukraine’s terrorist attacks are getting closer to the Russian elite,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “This attack is a message from Zelenskyy to the entire Russian elite: you will not hide from me anywhere.”
Investigators said they believed the attacker could have posed as a courier or contractor to enter the gated luxury apartment community.
The blast would represent the latest embarrassment for Russia’s FSB, which has struggled to stop Kyiv’s ongoing assassination campaign.
In December, Ukraine said it was behind the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, the head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, who was killed along with his assistant when a bomb hidden in an electric scooter went off as the two men left a building in a residential area in south-east Moscow.
