Following the weekend death of the daughter of a prominent Russian ultranationalist, a Ukrainian national who served as a pro-Putin official in the occupied Zaporizhzhia area was murdered in a vehicle explosion today.
Father-of-one Ivan Sushko, 40, passed away this morning when a car bomb tore apart his vehicle.
He was appointed to lead the “military-civilian administration” at Mykhailivka, where Europe’s biggest nuclear reactor is under siege, by Russian occupying troops in May.
According to Vladimir Rogov, a senior Russian official in the seized territory, “an explosive device had been put beneath his automobile seat.”
Russian supporter Rogov said the incident was carried out by local “saboteurs” and pledged to find them, alleging Ukraine was striking Russian-backed authorities who “help better the lives of common people.”
Although Ukrainian authorities have not yet addressed the bombing, President Volodymyr Zelensky has categorically denied that his operatives were responsible for the weekend murder of Darya Dugina, 29, the daughter of “Putin’s Rasputin.”
In fact, he went so far as to suggest Natalia Shaban-Vovk, a 43-year-old mother who Russia claims worked for Kyiv’s SBU secret agency, is not even a Ukrainian citizen, in rejecting any connection to her.
He said, “This is clearly not our duty.” She is not an American citizen.
She has no fascination for us. She is not on Ukrainian territory or Ukrainian territory under occupation.
When she was murdered in a vehicle bombing in Moscow, Russia claims that Dugina, the daughter of ultranationalist scholar Alexander Dugin, who is thought to be the brains behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, died a “martyr.”
Instinctively attributing the murder to Ukraine and naming Shaban-Vovk as the suspected assassin was the FSB secret agency in Moscow.
Putin’s adversaries in the West and Ukraine, however, argue that a Russian “false flag” operation is a more plausible scenario.
The Kremlin’s claim that Shaban-Vovk alone crossed the border from Ukraine into Russia, committed the murder while driving a Mini Cooper with fake licence plates and her 12-year-old passenger riding shotgun, and then fled into Estonia before being apprehended is disputed by them as being implausible.
According to the FSB, Natalia was born in 1976 in Mariupol, which was then a part of the Soviet Union, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.
Shaban, according to pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, is the new surname she allegedly obtained afterwards.
And it looks that at least part of that information is accurate.
On VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, a now-deleted profile depicts a Natalia Shaban (Vovk) who resided in Mariupol.
Her account has a small number of followers and was last used in 2016.
The FSB also asserts that Natalia brought Sofia, her daughter, into Russia while spying on Dugin before to the murder.
Additionally, Danil Shaban has been mentioned on pro-Russian social media pages as being the name of Natalia’s son.
That information also seems to be supported by Vkontakte data from the same deleted profile that was found by the investigative website Proekt.
Natalia does indeed seem to be the mother of two kids—a boy and a girl—and different Danil Shaban accounts can be found on Facebook, VKontakte, and TikTok, each of which states that Danil was born in Mariupol in 2000.
However, the narratives provided by the Russian and Ukrainian sources differ after this.
Russian perspective
According to the FSB, Natalia entered Russia on July 23 while driving a Mini Cooper with licence plates from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, the seized part of Ukraine that currently governs Mariupol.
She is allegedly seen in CCTV video being inspected by border patrol officers while she waits at the border crossing point, according to spies.
She allegedly swapped the licence plates for ones from Kazakhstan and travelled to Moscow, where she allegedly leased an apartment in the same complex as Dugina.
Additionally, she is said to have dyed her blonde hair brunette in order to avoid being spotted, as shown by additional CCTV that the FSB has made public and claims to have been captured in the stairway of her apartment building.
Natalia is suspected of spending weeks stalking Dugina before detonating a device beneath her vehicle on Saturday when she and her father Alexander attended a traditional poetry festival at the Zakharovo farm outside of Moscow.
The FSB claims that after the device was detonated, Natalia switched vehicle plates once again, this time for Ukrainian ones, and drove to Estonia before entering the EU.
According to pro-Kremlin Telegram groups, she has now gone west and was most recently seen checking into a hotel in Austria with two other ladies and a kid.
Additionally, they claim that they have found an advertisement for the Mini Cooper she was driving on Ukrainian social media.
The leading news outlet in Russia, RIA Novosti, claims to have spoken with Natalia’s father, who informed them that she had been a member of the Ukrainian military.
He claimed that she had resigned due to “health reasons” and had not taken part in anti-terrorist operations in the Donbas, the term Ukraine gave to the war that had erupted in its eastern regions after Russia’s first incursion in 2014.
He said that Natalia had fled to Russia as a refugee “some time ago,” adding that he was unaware that she had done so.
He continued by saying that she had just phoned to let him know she was in Lithuania.
The FSB also released a picture of what they claim is Natalia’s ID card from the Ukrainian military, which they claim shows she was a member of Azov. However, this has been widely debunked as a forgery.
The Russian embassy in the US voiced “great anger” over a US assertion that the assassination may have been a “false flag” murder committed by Moscow.
In a statement, the administration said that “the administration gives the world the idea that the Russian authorities are accountable for the murder of their own citizen and the real patriot of Russia.”
We are really unhappy that the US government used this awful event to promote a number of reckless Russophobic sentiments once again.
Ukraine’s perspective
Natalia Shaban-Vovk is now “not a Ukrainian citizen” and “not on Ukrainian territory,” according to the president of Ukraine, Zelensky.
But even before he made his declaration, Kiev vehemently denied any involvement in Dugina’s death.
Additionally, data released by Kyiv and obtained by a number of pro-Ukraine sites refutes significant portions of Russia’s story.
Because there are no female troops in the Azov battalion, a spokesperson for the group informed Ukrainian media that Natalia had never served with them.
The insider also said that an Azov soldier would not be seen carrying the ID card shown by the FSB, which is really for the National Guard.
He said that since the lady had married and changed her last name, pencil lines on the ID demonstrate that it was invalid.
The soldier conjectured that the fake ID had been stored in the Mariupol archives of Ukraine’s national guard, which Russia currently controls, and had been discovered and mishandled for propaganda reasons by Russian forces.
Additionally, internet sleuths claimed to have found proof that the ID’s photo had been altered.
Additionally, pro-Ukrainian Telegram users discovered what seems to be a profile that indicated Natalia’s first husband, Andrey Vovk, had connections to pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas.
Andrey is charged with helping to organise a fake referendum on leaving Ukraine; his name is included in a database that tracks Ukrainian “traitors.”
All of this raises the possibility—without proving it—that Natalia may have had stronger feelings for Russia than for Ukraine.
Additionally, Proekt discovered discrepancies in social media accounts.
Danil Shaban was born in 2000, making him 22 years old, according to his Vkontakte profile. Sofia Shaban entered Russia two months ago with her mother, and the FSB claims that she was 12 years old at the time.
Social media images of Natalia show her with a boy and a girl who seem very similar to her and to one another but who appear to be around the same age rather than 10 years apart.
The website also alleges that the Mini Cooper advertisement was published the day before the explosion and that a video on Danil’s TikTok shows him operating a similar vehicle on August 16 in Kyiv, while Natalia was meant to be in Moscow with the vehicle.
Conflicting claims of Natalia’s genuine identity have added to the complexity of a case that was already clouded by speculation that Putin’s inner circle was the target of the explosion or that it was an FSB “false flag” operation.
In order to provide a justification for escalating indiscriminate violence against Ukrainian people and the government to coincide with the nation’s independence day, Kyiv insists that the FSB is behind the whole operation.
The National Republican Army, a hitherto unidentified rebel organisation in Russia, has surfaced to claim credit for the strike, throwing gasoline to the flames.
The gang makes its announcement via Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker turned rebel, and claims to be behind a number of partisan assaults against Putin’s government and his war in Russia.
According to their manifesto, “our objective is to halt the ruin of Russia and its neighbours, to stop the actions of a few Kremlin merchants who have sucked on the riches of our people and are committing crimes within and outside the nation.”