Senior Russian Military Official Is Killed in Car Explosion Near Moscow
The death of the officer appeared to add to a string of targeted assassinations of high-profile opponents of Ukraine inside Russia.
Wreckage after an explosion in the city of Balashikha, east of Moscow, on Tuesday.Yulia Morozova/Reuters
Reuters
By Ivan Nechepurenko
Reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia
June 10, 2026
Updated 1:31 p.m. ET
A senior Russian military officer died on Tuesday after a car he was driving exploded near a residential building outside Moscow, a senior Ukrainian official and Russian media outlets said.
The episode appeared to be the latest targeted assassination of high-profile opponents of Ukraine in Russia’s heartland. It came as Kyiv has successfully thwarted Moscow’s attempt to launch a summer offensive and as the Ukrainian military has been bringing the war home to Russia, including through long-range strikes on Moscow and on oil assets across the country.
Russian investigators said that they had opened a criminal case related to the explosion. They said the blast occurred early Tuesday in the city of Balashikha, east of Moscow. The driver of the vehicle died at the scene, the investigators said.
The Russian authorities did not identify the victim or detail the nature of the criminal case that had been opened, and the Ukrainian government had no official comment about the explosion.
But two Russian and two Ukrainian media outlets said that the man who died was Damir R. Davydov. A senior Ukrainian official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters confirmed that Mr. Davydov was the victim and said that he was an officer in the supply department for the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian military.
On Wednesday, when asked about the episode, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that President Vladimir V. Putin had been briefed about the matter. He added that details about the case were “not subject to public disclosure because of the ongoing investigation.”
The explosion occurred in the same neighborhood where an attack took place in April 2025. In that strike, Maj. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the main operational department of the General Staff, was killed by a car bomb.
Ukrainian special services have targeted a number of high-profile Russian military figures in attacks that have exposed officers’ vulnerability and embarrassed the Kremlin’s security services.
At the end of December, Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the General Staff’s army operational training directorate, died in a car bombing. The year before, in December 2024, Igor Kirillov, a general in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces, died after an explosive device planted in a scooter detonated near the entrance to a residential building.
At the time, Mr. Putin described Mr. Kirillov’s killing as a “severe blunder” and said that Russian special services should prevent such cases from happening in the future.
While Russia has also attempted covert actions in Ukraine, it has found less success. In July, an officer from an elite unit of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency was shot dead on a street in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and suspicion fell on Russia. But Ukraine’s intelligence services have described thwarting several other assassination plots aimed at President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as at senior military and intelligence officials.
Ivan Nechepurenko covers Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia. He divides his reporting time between Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia.
***
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