Car bomb kills Russian colonel on highway outside St Petersburg

The blast hit the Kolpino Highway in St Petersburg's Pushkinsky District around 7am local time, according to local media, which reported that a bomb was attached to the underside of the vehicle. An unnamed source told Russian outlet Fontanka that the man killed was a colonel who had been driving, and that a family member travelling with him was wounded by shrapnel. Investigators have opened a murder probe and have not officially confirmed the serviceman's rank.

Footage circulating on Russian Telegram channels showed a large, dark-coloured car ringed by debris with damaged skirting, its doors and bonnet open as investigators worked inside a police cordon. The Independent could not verify the video; news agencies TASS and RIA carried similar footage of the scene. Russia's Investigative Directorate said forensic experts and operational officers were examining the site and ordering a number of examinations, adding that all the circumstances of the incident were being clarified.

Nobody has taken responsibility for the explosion, which lands amid Russia's nearly five-year war in Ukraine. It isn't the first of its kind there — another serviceman died in a car explosion in the same district on August 27. Car bombings have also struck Moscow and Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, in recent months.

Moscow has pointed at Kyiv before. Earlier this year Russia accused Ukrainian intelligence of an assassination attempt on a Russian general in Moscow, which Ukraine denied. Moscow also blamed Ukraine for a car bombing that killed Lt Gen Fanil Sarvarov last year; Kyiv did not take responsibility for that attack either. Sarvarov, a veteran officer, had been responsible for the military's combat training and readiness for the war in Ukraine before his death.

Separately, Russia's FSB said it had arrested four alleged Ukrainian intelligence agents, including a foreign national, accused of gathering information on participants in the war. The agency claimed the suspects were spying on Russia's defence industry enterprises and energy facilities with the aim of committing acts of terrorism and sabotage.