(GoRealNewsNow.com) – In a massive blow to its enemy in its fight for freedom, Ukraine has hit back against Putin’s Russia by assassinating a murderous ally of Putin from the occupied Ukrainian regions. A killer known as “the Executioner.”
A pro-Western Ukraine has been fighting off an all-out invasion by Putin’s Russia for close to two years now. It was first invaded by Moscow in 2014, on then-President Barack Obama’s watch, when the Russians seized the Crimean Peninsula and parts of the Donbas region.
Earlier this week, Ukraine announced that Mikhail Filiponenko, a member of the Luhansk legislature, formerly a Ukrainian citizen who had led pro-Russian forces since 2014, was killed when his car was blown up.
On Thursday, Ukrainian authorities claimed responsibility for the death of the pro-Russian politician, describing the act as retribution.
“Traitors to Ukraine and collaborators with terrorist Russia in temporarily occupied territories … will receive just retribution! The hunt continues!” the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense declared on Telegram.
“It was our operation,” Andriy Cherniak, a representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, affirmed to Politico.
Filiponenko narrowly escaped a previous car bombing before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Previously leading Moscow-backed separatist forces in Luhansk and representing them in a cease-fire monitoring center, he was accused by the Ukrainian directorate of organizing and participating in the torture of prisoners of war and civilians, labeling him as “the executioner.”
“Waged largely in the shadows, this way of war entails planned assassinations by a state — i.e., its special forces — of specific individuals who belong to the opposing force, in order to gradually degrade, demoralize, and deter the adversary,” commented Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and current president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting.
“While this new strategy is highly unlikely to achieve Ukraine’s ultimate goal of driving the Russian military out of occupied territories, it will eventually bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a new state — a low-intensity, protracted phase, which will eventually turn it into a ‘frozen’ conflict,” she predicted.
The Moscow Times observed that several prominent supporters of Russia’s invasion have been targeted since February 2022, but Ukraine has seldom openly admitted involvement.