Russia’s puppet mayor in Mariupol ‘survives assassination attempt’ at zoo

The pro-Kremlin mayor installed by Russia during its seige of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has reportedly survived an assassination attempt.

Konstantin Ivaschenko, a local council member with the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life party, was “appointed” mayor of the Azov Sea port on 6 April by Donestsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin, as most of the city lay devastated by Russia’s sustained bombardment.

The city has lain under Russian control for months now, with the last Ukrainians departing the final stronghold of the Azovstal steelworks in May after weeks spent bunkered underground in harrowing conditions.

The assassination attempt was reported on Saturday by a journalist with Russian state TV, who said on Telegram that “an explosive device was planted at the entrance to Mariupol Zoo, and went off at the moment the official arrived”, adding that Mr Ivaschenko was not injured.

Shortly afterwards, Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to the city’s Ukrainian mayor Vadym Boychenko, also wrote of the attack on the messaging service, adding: “Unfortunately, it was not very successful. But this is only a beginning.”

Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti also reported that an assassination attempt had taken place.

It cited sources at the scene who said that a “clap” sounded as Mr Ivaschenko was passing, and that there had been no victims, but reported that there had been no official confirmation of the incident.

A vehicle from the explosives laboratory of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs was later working at the scene, according to RIA.

According to Mr Andryushchenko, the Ukrainian mayoral aide, Mr Ivaschenko told Mariupol residents shortly after his assumption of the title of mayor that the city would be annexed and incorporated into Russia’s Rostov region, which borders eastern Ukraine.

The reported attempt on his life comes as Moscow reels from a number of attacks behind Russian lines, with a series of explosions in annexed Crimea – previously deemed secure – reportedly wiped out swathes of its military equipment.

Russian authorities said on Saturday that they had shot down Ukrainian drones in Crimea, one of which was said to be above the Sevastopol headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet – just three weeks after an explosion at the same compound injured six people and disrupted Russia’s Navy Day holiday.

Earlier in the week, a Russian ammunition depot in the annexed peninsula was hit by an explosion, while nine Russian warplanes were reportedly destroyed at a Crimean airbase the previous week – an attack one Western official claimed rendered half of Russia’s Black Sea naval aviation force useless.

Russia has seized numerous cities in Ukraine’s south and last month took the Donbas region of Luhansk. But its control over these territories appears to have been met with resistance, with Kyiv claiming this week that teachers are being kidnapped and tortured over their refusal to teach pro-Kremlin material.

On Saturday, 100 miles west of Mariupol, a Ukrainian airstrike hit targets in Melitopol, the largest Russian-controlled city in the Zaporizhzhia region, which the city’s Ukrainian mayor claimed was “a precise hit on one of the Russian military bases”.