In the evening at about 6 p.m., an explosion occurred on the territory of an out-of-service petrol station in Mykolaiv. Seven patrol policemen were injured, two of them in serious condition, police said.
Two hours after the incident, the Mykolaiv regional prosecutor’s office said it had opened a case on the fact of a terrorist act causing grave consequences.
An improvised explosive device exploded, the prosecutor’s office said.
This is the second such case in the last two days in Ukraine.
Seven employees of the Patrol Police Department came for a shift change and parked their cars on the territory of the former petrol station, wrote the head of the National Police Ivan Vygovsky.
This petrol station is located near the administrative building of the Patrol Police Department in the Nikolaev region.
“The day before yesterday a terrorist attack against police officers took place in Lviv. This is not a coincidence. The enemy is aiming to kill Ukrainian police officers, who daily stand in defence of people and the state,” Vygovsky wrote.
According to him, law enforcers regard these events “as a targeted attack on the law and order system and destabilisation of the situation inside the country”.
The incident in Nikolaev was one of the first to comment on the President.
“We have just received the first reports of law enforcement officers on the explosion in Nikolaev. National Police officers were injured – seven people are wounded, two of them in serious condition. They are provided with the necessary assistance. All the circumstances are being clarified,” said Vladimir Zelensky.
According to the prosecutor’s office, not two, but one policeman is in serious condition.
Less than two days ago, on the night from 21 to 22 February, two explosions took place in the centre of Lviv – at the place where the police arrived on a call due to an alleged robbery during curfew.
As a result, one policewoman was killed and another 25 people were injured. As suspected by the investigation, before the explosives were planted in a rubbish dump on this street by a resident of Rivne region. And a girl from Kharkiv called the police, claiming a robbery in Lviv.
Both women, according to the investigation, acted on the instructions of their Russian handler – they were to be paid for their “services”, but neither of them received the money.
Russia is now intensifying its campaign of sabotage to undermine the trust of Ukrainians and destabilise society, the Institute for the Study of War has said.
Earlier, Klymenko told a briefing that Ukraine has seen a surge in crimes related to the recruitment of Ukrainians who, at the request of Russian security services, set fire to TCC cars, Ukrposhta branches or plant explosives.
In the past two years alone, Klymenko said, four attempts to commit a terrorist act in Kiev were exposed in the same way as it happened in Lviv – that is, call 102, wait for the police to arrive and detonate explosives where law enforcers will be.