A bomb on the day of talks: who Sergei Zavorotny is, and why explosions in Russia go off when Moscow talks peace

On November 13 a car belonging to 72-year-old Sergei Zavorotny, former press secretary to ex-Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov, was blown up in Moscow. A day earlier an Air Force colonel was killed near St. Petersburg. Both blasts came during the Kremlin talks with US envoys — as did the killings of generals Moskalik and Sarvarov.

Kurs Media editorial team13 November 2026, 15:45Updated 14 November 2026, 08:03

The Moscow Kremlin wall in winter. On November 12, Vladimir Putin held talks here with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0

On Friday morning, a black Toyota Fortuner pulled out of a courtyard on Kirovogradskaya Street in Moscow's Chertanovo district — an ordinary residential neighborhood, an ordinary morning queue to get onto the road. The car had gone about two hundred meters when a bomb went off beneath the driver's seat.

The blast threw the driver onto the roadway. Passersby ran to him before the ambulance arrived. Footage later released by the Investigative Committee shows the left side of the SUV torn open.

At the wheel was Sergei Zavorotny, 72, a journalist and former press secretary and adviser to ex-Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov. According to media reports, he lost part of his left arm and suffered a brain contusion, broken ribs and an open fracture of the lower leg. He is in intensive care, in critical condition, on a ventilator. Media also reported that another man was wounded in the legs and hit by shrapnel.

It was the second car bombing in Russia in a day. Both came during the 48 hours in which the question of whether the conflict in Ukraine might end was being discussed in the Kremlin and then in Dublin.

"A Ukrainian trace"

The first to name the victim was Oleg Tsarev, a former member of Ukraine's parliament, on his Telegram channel. Azarov was cautious at first. "So far I know nothing beyond what you know," he told TASS before noon. Later the caution was gone: the former prime minister said he had no doubt of a "Ukrainian trace."

Investigators are not rushing to conclusions, but they are not treating it as an accident either. An early version spoke of a faulty gas cylinder. Yet the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee opened a case specifically for attempted murder committed by a means dangerous to the public and by a group of persons. According to media reports, a homemade device of about 300 grams of TNT equivalent was placed under the driver's seat and was probably detonated remotely. Medical and explosives examinations have been ordered. Investigators have not officially named who ordered the attack.

A man from the prime minister's office

Zavorotny was hardly a first-rank public figure, and that may be part of the answer to the question of why him.

A historian by training, he wrote his dissertation on the history of Cuba. For about ten years he was a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent in Latin America. In 2003–2004 he headed the press service of the Rodina faction in the State Duma. In the late 2000s he moved to Kyiv and became aide, then press secretary, to Azarov, who led Ukraine's government in 2010–2014 under Viktor Yanukovych. He stayed at the prime minister's side until the cabinet resigned in January 2014.

After the Maidan, Zavorotny followed Azarov to Moscow. In the summer of 2015 he became press secretary of the "Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine," which Azarov presented as an alternative to the new authorities in Kyiv. He later ran the website Antifashist and spoke at events of the Izborsky Club. In 2018 he co-wrote with Alexei Berdnikov a book with a telling title: "Yanukovych Gave Up. The State Department Accepted. How Russia Lost Ukraine." He called the Maidan a coup, blamed events in Ukraine on Western interference, and criticized Volodymyr Zelensky.

To Kyiv, such people are traitors. To Moscow, they are witnesses to how Ukraine was turned toward the West in 2014. For twelve years Zavorotny lived openly in Moscow. On Friday his life was put in danger.

A balloon from the Baltics

A day before Chertanovo, at about 7 a.m. on November 12, a car belonging to an Air Force colonel exploded in the settlement of Shushary outside St. Petersburg. According to preliminary reports, he was chief navigator of the 6th Air Force and Air Defense Army. The colonel was killed. His name has not been released.

The scheme pieced together by investigators and journalists reads like a spy thriller. According to Fontanka, the explosive device was brought into the Leningrad region by balloon from the Baltic states. An unknown person collected it and handed it to the perpetrator. At about 1 a.m., a 31-year-old St. Petersburg resident born in the Pskov region placed the bomb under the car. At 2:43 a.m. he was already on a flight to Istanbul, and by morning he was heading to Chisinau. The colonel's car traveled about three hundred meters. It was detonated remotely — either by a motion trigger or via a built-in GPS tracker.

Less than an hour after the blast in Shushary, the plane carrying US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner landed at Vnukovo.

Forty-eight hours

On the afternoon of November 12, Vladimir Putin spoke with the Americans in the Kremlin for about two and a half hours. Yuri Ushakov called the conversation "substantive, constructive, frank and useful." The sides are agreeing on the terms of the largest prisoner exchange. Witkoff and Kushner backed the idea of a humanitarian mission in Kostiantynivka, and Moscow is ready to begin demining there at once. Russia is ready to discuss a new European security architecture together with the United States.

From Moscow, the envoys flew to Dublin to meet Zelensky. Kushner wrote of "significant progress" and said the next round would include the Europeans.

On the morning of November 13, as those words were spreading across the news wires, the Toyota exploded on Kirovogradskaya Street.

Four years of bombs

Over four years, bombings and assassination attempts in Russia have become almost routine:

- August 20, 2022. Darya Dugina's car is blown up outside Moscow; the journalist is killed. The FSB blames Ukrainian intelligence; Kyiv denies involvement. - April 2, 2023. Military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky is killed by a bomb in a St. Petersburg café. Darya Trepova, who handed him a statuette containing the bomb, is sentenced to 27 years. - May 6, 2023. Writer Zakhar Prilepin's car is blown up in the Nizhny Novgorod region. His driver is killed; Prilepin is wounded. - December 17, 2024. General Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection troops, is killed outside his building in Moscow by a bomb hidden in a scooter. A source in Ukraine's SBU told media the service was behind it. - February 3, 2025. Armen Sarkisyan, founder of the Arbat battalion, is killed by a blast in Moscow's Alye Parusa residential complex. - April 25, 2025. A car bomb in Balashikha kills General Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the General Staff's Main Operations Directorate. The Foreign Ministry says there are grounds to believe Ukrainian intelligence was involved. - December 22, 2025. A bomb under a car on Yasenevaya Street in Moscow kills Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, head of the General Staff's operational training directorate. - June 9, 2026. In southwest Moscow, the FSB disarms a bomb with a GPS tracker under the car of an employee of a research and production enterprise. Two minors are detained. According to investigators, a girl collected the device from a dead drop on the instructions of Ukrainian intelligence. - August 13, 2026. In Sevastopol, a blast kills Robert Shageev, a former Ukrainian submarine commander who sided with Russia in 2014. - November 12, 2026. Shushary, an Air Force colonel. - November 13, 2026. Moscow, Sergei Zavorotny.

That is only what has become known. In March, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that in 2025 the country prevented 308 terrorist attacks and broke up 79 covert cells. Among the foiled plots were murders of senior officials and commanders. "Not all such cases make the news," he noted.

Too many coincidences

Moskalik was killed on the morning of April 25, 2025. That same day Witkoff flew to Moscow and spent more than three hours with Putin. Ushakov said then that the positions of Moscow and Washington had converged on a number of issues. Andrei Kolesnik, a member of the Duma's defense committee, called the bombing an attempt to derail the talks.

Sarvarov was killed on December 22, 2025, a day after Kirill Dmitriev wrapped up talks with Witkoff and Kushner in Miami, which he called "constructive."

Now Shushary and Chertanovo: two blasts in exactly the hours when the American envoys were flying from Abu Dhabi to Moscow, and from Moscow to Dublin.

Investigators have not yet named who ordered the attacks, and may not for a long time. But if these are coincidences, they are remarkably precise. Each time the talks move forward, a bomb goes off in Russia. The victims differ — generals and colonels, war correspondents, journalists, an elderly former prime minister's press secretary. What they share is timing. It looks less like revenge on individuals than like a provocation: a bet that Moscow will respond not at the negotiating table but by slamming the door.

On Thursday, Ushakov spoke of the largest prisoner exchange of the entire conflict. On Friday, Sergei Zavorotny was rushed into intensive care.

Update, November 14, 2026. Zavorotny in a coma. Sergei Zavorotny has fallen into a coma, Izvestia reported, citing a source. Mykola Azarov called the bombing a terrorist attack and said Kyiv's intelligence services were behind it, with his former press secretary's writing as the main motive. Investigators have not officially confirmed that version. The case has been opened as attempted murder by an organized group. No arrests had been reported as of the morning of November 14.

Sources

Most sources are in Russian.

Kurs Media editorial team. Corrections and statements from the parties: press@kursmedia.com. Read in Russian.

"A Ukrainian trace"

A man from the prime minister's office

A balloon from the Baltics

Forty-eight hours

Four years of bombs

Too many coincidences

Sources

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