A car bombing in Kyiv that killed a Ukrainian volunteer soldier was captured on video

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A car bombing in Kyiv that killed a Ukrainian volunteer soldier was captured on video

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Kyiv car bombing

Screenshot/YouTube via Сергей Сидоренко

A car bombing in Kyiv on Friday killed a Ukrainian volunteer soldier and severely injured a woman and 10-year-old child, according to the Kyiv Post. 

The three victims were riding in a black Toyota Camry during rush-hour traffic when the bomb exploded, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

The bombing and its aftermath were captured in a number of videos that have since been uploaded to social media.

The victim, Timur Mahauri, was a Chechen man with Georgian citizenship who had previously told Ukrainian authorities that he was a member of an unnofficial Chechen batallion, called Sheikh Mansur, that fights against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, the Kyiv Post said.

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Ukrainian police and friends of Mahauri also told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he was a member of the battalion.

Although it's not yet clear who is behind the bombing, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, Artem Shevchenko, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Mahauri was known to run in "criminal circles." He was also reportedly arrested in Kyiv on illegal weapons charges earlier this year.

Another member of the volunteer battalion, Timerhan Minayev, who claimed to know Mahauri, told Ukrainian television that the victim had escaped a number of assassination attempts in the past, Kyiv Post reported.

"He was a personal enemy of Ramzan Kadyrov," Minayev reportedly said during the interview, referring to Putin's hand-picked president of Chechnya.

Kadyrov has reportedly been involved in many other assassination attempts, even the high-profile killing of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader who was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015.

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Two other Chechen citizens, a husband and wife named Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev, who had fought for Ukraine in the Donbas, were also targeted in Kyiv by a Chechen assassin posing as a journalist in June.

The assassin shot and wounded Osmayev while interviewing the couple before Okuyeva pulled out a gun and shot and injured the assassin himself. Moscow had previously accused the couple of attempting to assassinate Putin in 2012.

This is the third car bombing in Kyiv in the last 14 months, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.