On the morning of Nov. 13, a Toyota Fortuner SUV exploded in Moscow’s Chertanovo district. According to Russian media, the vehicle belonged to 72-year-old Sergei Zavorotny, a former press secretary and adviser to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. The injured driver was hospitalized.
As The Insider found, after moving to Moscow in 2014, Zavorotny went on to work on a series of pro-Russian information projects. As recently as the end of October, he was referred to as the editor-in-chief of the pro-Kremlin website Antifashist.com.
The explosion occurred on Kirovogradskaya Street. According to the Telegram channels SHOT and Mash, the SUV drove out of the courtyard of a residential building and traveled about 200 meters before the explosive device went off, blowing out the doors on the left side of the car and throwing the driver onto the roadway.
An eyewitness who was driving toward the Toyota told Moskovsky Komsomolets that after the explosion, the SUV lost control and came to a stop about a meter from his car. The man approached the victim, checked his pulse, and called an ambulance.
As SHOT reports, Zavorotny suffered shrapnel wounds to the chest and back as well as severe leg and arm injuries. The improvised explosive device is believed to have been placed under the driver’s seat.
Russia’s Investigative Committee dispatched a team to examine the crime scene and opened a criminal case, without specifying the charges. Law enforcement authorities have not yet confirmed the identity of the injured driver.
From advising PM Azarov to running a pro-Russian publication
Sergei Zavorotny is an international affairs journalist and commentator with a Ph.D. in history. In 2010, he worked as an adviser to Mykola Azarov, who was then Ukraine’s prime minister. In May 2010, Zavorotny took part in a foreign information campaign staged by the Party of Regions, the political vehicle of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. As Ukrainska Pravda wrote in 2010 shortly after Yanukovych was sworn in, Zavorotny accompanied a group of Party of Regions lawmakers and Yanukovych acolytes on trips to Israel and France in an effort to promote the positions of Ukraine’s new government.
After the Euromaidan protests of 2013-2014, which ended in Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, Zavorotny continued to work with Azarov, moving to Moscow along with several key figures in the old Party of Regions apparatus. In July 2015, Zavorotny announced the creation of the Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine, effectively an alternative Ukrainian government in exile. Former Verkhovna Rada lawmakers Volodymyr Oliinyk, Ihor Markov, and Oleh Tsaryov took part in the project. The committee intended to put forward its own candidate for president of Ukraine, but its efforts never led to any notable political success.
In 2018, Zavorotny and Aleksei Berdnikov published the book “Yanukovych Gave Up. The State Department Accepted. How Russia Lost Ukraine. Notes of Mykola Azarov’s Adviser.” At a presentation of the book in Moscow, the authors offered their own version of the events of the Euromaidan.
During his time in Moscow, Zavorotny also became editor-in-chief of the pro-Russian information resource Antifashist. In February 2022, shortly before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the outlet presented him in that capacity during a discussion of Ukrainian politics. In late October of this year, a piece in the newspaper Trud identified Zavorotny as Antifashist’s editor-in-chief.
What The Insider previously found about Azarov’s Moscow affairs
In April 2017, The Insider established that the office of Azarov’s Committee for the Salvation of Ukraine was located on the 47th floor of the Naberezhnaya Tower in the Moscow City business center. Neighboring premises were occupied by entities of Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Kurchenko, who also moved to Russia after the Euromaidan. Former Verkhovna Rada lawmaker Volodymyr Oliinyk and journalist Yuriy Kot, who was in charge of media support for the organization, were regularly present at the committee’s office.
Today’s explosion follows a similar incident in St. Petersburg one day earlier. On the morning of Nov. 12, the car of an unnamed Russian colonel exploded in the Shushary district, killing the target at the scene. Investigators opened a murder case. According to the local outlet Fontanka, the explosive device was planted under the vehicle’s underbody.
No link has been reported between the two explosions.
