In Ukraine’s only area of successful “military” operations, the Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) proudly announced today yet another car-bombing assassination, this time of a legislator in Lugansk: “On Nov. 8, 2023, at 08:40 a.m., as a result of a car explosion, the so-called deputy of the so-called ‘Verkhovny Council of the L.P.R.’ [Lugansk People’s Republic], Mykhailo Yuriyovych Filiponenko, was eliminated.” GUR’s rival, the SBU, attempted to assassinate another Donbass political figure, Oleg Tsaryov, on Oct. 27, but he has survived.
GUR told the Kyiv Post that they worked with local partisans to target and assassinate the lawmaker. Politico was told by the GUR’s Andriy Cherniak: “Yeah, it was our operation.”
Up until 2010, Filiponenko had been an elected representative from the Party of the Regions in a local District Council in Lugansk. In 2014, after the militia groupings from the Maidan coup went to Lugansk to enforce the new government on the locals, Filiponenko became the acting head of the Lugansk “People’s Militia” and, later, evidently served as a police chief.
