Multiple Pro-Russian Officials Killed in Single Day Across Ukraine

Multiple Russian-installed officials have been killed in a single day across Ukraine, with Kyiv ramping up efforts to recapture territory that was seized by Russian forces during the course of the war.

On Friday morning, authorities said Ukraine struck government buildings in the occupied Kherson region at least five times using U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), killing at least one person and wounding others.

Ekaterina Gubareva, the deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in Kherson, said that at the time of the strike, a meeting was underway between the heads of the city and municipal districts.

She called the attack "a vile act of terrorism" and said the head of the labor department was injured, and her driver died.

The region has been under Russian control since the beginning of March. However, Ukraine is waging a counteroffensive in the region, and has had success in another counterattack in the Kharkiv area in the northeast of the country.

Elsewhere on Friday, on the other side of the country, Sergei Gorenko, the prosecutor general of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) in eastern Ukraine and Ekaterina Steglenko, his deputy, were killed by a bomb blast at their offices, Russia's state-run news agency Interfax reported, citing emergency services.

Eyewitnesses told Interfax that they saw damage from the explosion on the third floor of the Prosecutor General's Office building.

The cause of the explosion isn't yet clear.

And separately on Friday, in occupied Berdyansk inside the Zaporizhzhia region, Oleg Boyko, a Russian-appointed "deputy mayor for housing and communal services" and his wife Lyudmila, who headed the local territorial election commission for a referendum on joining Russia, were killed, Interfax reported.

Moscow has accused Kyiv of carrying out targeted strikes against Russian-appointed officials who have been working with the Kremlin amid the ongoing conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's senior adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Kyiv did not plot the Luhansk blast, and suggested the explosion was either an attempt to dispose of witnesses to Russian war crimes, or it was a result of an internal mafia dispute.

"Elimination of so-called 'LNR prosecutor general' and his deputy should be considered as showdowns of local organized criminal groups that could not share looted property before a large-scale escape," Podolyak wrote on Twitter. "Or as Russian Federation's purge of witnesses to war crimes. Investigation will show ..."

Ukraine has yet to comment on the other incidents.

Several Russian officials installed in occupied Ukrainian cities have been killed in recent weeks as Russian losses mount and Ukraine seeks to retake occupied territory.

Newsweek has contacted the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia for comment.