On the morning of Sept. 3, the commander of Russia’s 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division was targeted in an assassination attempt. Major General Nikolai Varpakhovich sustained serious gunshot wounds after an unknown assailant opened fire in the village of Probuzhdeniye, Saratov region, not far from the Engels Air Base. Varpakhovich has been hospitalized.
The state-owned media agency TASS reported that the Investigative Committee’s Saratov Region branch has opened a criminal case involving attempted murder and illegal arms trafficking. Investigators recovered shell casings and bullets at the scene and are working with law enforcement agencies to establish the circumstances of the attack and locate the perpetrators.
The Telegram channel Mash was the first to report the attack, but it did not name the victim. Russian pro-war channels Dva Mayora and ZAPISKI VETERANA, which have ties to the Russian military and security services, later confirmed that there had indeed been an assassination attempt against a senior officer. According to their information, the attacker drove up to a private house on a motorcycle while wearing a helmet that concealed his face. One bullet hit the general in the torso, another in the face. The general’s driver was also wounded but managed to get out of the line of fire and later called an ambulance.
The Telegram channel Dosye Shpiona named Nikolai Varpakhovich as the victim and reported that the shooter had ambushed him at around 7 a.m. in Probuzhdeniye. According to the channel, the general sustained wounds to the head and abdomen and is in critical condition. Other sources describe his condition as serious. The attacker has reportedly not yet been detained.
The address in Probuzhdeniye named by Dosye Shpiona does indeed appear among addresses linked to Varpakhovich in leaked Russian databases. However, that address corresponds to an industrial facility, not a private residence. More recent databases link Varpakhovich to the city of Engels itself: in 2022 he renewed his driver’s license at a local traffic police office, and since 2023 the city of Engels and the Saratov Region have appeared in his insurance records.
Varpakhovich has commanded the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division of long-range aviation, based in Engels, since November 2021. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the HUR, names Varpakhovich as one of the Russian commanders responsible for organizing strategic aviation missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure with the use of Kh-22, Kh-32, Kh-101/102, and Kh-555 cruise missiles. The HUR also links the 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division to a mass strike on Ukraine on July 8, 2024.
On Aug. 31, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office filed war crimes charges against Varpakhovich in absentia. According to the Ukrainian investigation, the general personally gave the combat order for the missile strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv on July 8, 2024. The SBU claims that units under his command carried out a precision strike on the hospital with a Kh-101 cruise missile launched from a Tu-95MS bomber. The strike killed two people, injured dozens, destroyed the medical facility’s toxicology building, and damaged four other hospital buildings.
Before being appointed division commander, Varpakhovich served for many years in long-range aviation. According to the HUR, from 2014 to 2021 he headed the 43rd Combat Training and Retraining Center for long-range aviation flight crews in Ryazan. He has flown the Tu-95MS and Tu-95MSM, holds the qualification of “military sniper pilot,” and has logged at least 2,500 flight hours.
In December 2023, the Ukrainian OSINT group Bdzholy reported that Varpakhovich’s youngest son, 21-year-old Vladislav, had died in September of that year from a gunshot wound to the head fired from an assault rifle. The younger Varpakhovich was doing his compulsory military service at a unit in Ryazan at the time. While there is no independent confirmation of the circumstances of his death, The Insider found that Vladislav Varpakhovich’s taxpayer ID number was invalidated on Sept. 11, 2023, which corroborates the report of his death at around that time.
Varpakhovich is far from the first Russian strategic aviation officer to be attacked since the start of the full-scale war. In February 2024, the HUR reported that Tu-95 crew commander Major Oleg Stegachev had been shot dead in Engels, and in October of that year, Tu-22M3 pilot and squadron chief of staff Dmitry Golenkov was found dead near Bryansk. Ukrainian intelligence linked both officers to missile strikes on Ukraine.
