Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on July 24 that Turkish police have detained a Russian man suspected in a car bombing in Moscow earlier in the day that wounded two people, one of whom is reported to be a senior military intelligence officer.
The man, identified by Yerlikaya as Yevgeny Serebryakov, a Russian citizen, is suspected of conducting a terrorist act using an explosive device on a car in Moscow that left two people wounded, Yerlikaya said on X. Serebryakov arrived on a flight from Moscow and was detained by police in Turkey's Mugla Province, Yerlikaya added.
Yerlikaya's post carried a video showing Turkish police taking a man out of a white vehicle and handcuffing him.
Russia's Investigative Committee said earlier in the day that the owner of the Toyota Land Cruiser SUV and a passenger were wounded in the blast, while Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said the blast was caused by an "unidentified device" placed in the vehicle.
"Preliminary investigations revealed that an unidentified object placed in a vehicle detonated in a parking lot in the capital’s north," Volk said. "Two people were injured in the explosion and rushed to a medical institution by ambulance."
Neither agency identified the two people wounded in the blast, saying that a criminal investigation and a forensic investigation had been opened into the incident that occurred in a parking lot on Sinyavinskaya Street in the northern part of the Russian capital.
The Kommersant newspaper reported that one of the wounded served in the Main Intelligence Directorate of Russia's General Staff, known as the GRU.
The Astra Telegram channel initially reported that Andrei Torgashov, 49, the deputy chief of unit 33790, a Russian military satellite communications radio center, and his wife were the two victims, and that both had been hospitalized.
Astra also issued an edited security-camera video purporting to show the moment of the explosion.
Pictures and videos of the vehicle parked in a residential courtyard with the windows, doors, and front side destroyed in the explosion circulated on the Baza Telegram channel, which is linked to Russian security services. Baza said that "presumably" one of the two victims was an officer of the Russian military intelligence.
Torgashov, who had reportedly taken part in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, had his feet torn off and his wife suffered facial injuries, some reports said.
However, the 360 Telegram channel later quoted Torgashov's wife, Maya, as saying that neither she nor her husband was in the car when the explosion occurred, claiming other people were in the vehicle.
A report in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said that "the investigation leads include possible involvement of Ukrainian special services and their agents."
Several Russian military officials and pro-Kremlin public figures and bloggers have been targeted by bombing attacks since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.