A Russian naval officer has been killed in a car bombing in occupied Crimea, according to reports. A bomb was planted under a car which blew up and killed the Russian serviceman in the city of Sevastopol on Wednesday, in what a Kyiv security source said was a Ukrainian hit on the official they accused of war crimes.

The Telegram channel Baza identified the serviceman as 47-year-old Valery Trankovsky, a captain of the 1st rank in the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

A Russian Black Sea fleet commander has been killed in a car bomb explosion in Crimea, it has been reported. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed governor of the occupied peninsula, said that a military officer was in a car that exploded in the street in the city of Sevastopol on Wednesday morning.

"The Russian captain's legs were blown off and he died of blood loss," a Ukrainian security official told the AFP news agency about the assassination.

A Ukrainian source accuses Valery Trankovsky of committing war crimes by ordering missile attacks on civilians

A top Russian Navy commander accused of war crimes was assassinated in a Ukraine-planted car bomb explosion in Crimea on Wednesday, sources said. Valery Trankovsky, who headed the 41st brigade of Russia’s Black Sea missile ships,