> The ‘ordinary’ woman accused of assassinating a Russian commander in Crimea

It was just after dawn in Sevastopol when a powerful explosion tore through a quiet square in a residential district of the Russian-occupied Crimean port city.

Hidden inside a rubbish bin, a bomb containing the equivalent of about 500g of TNT detonated on 13 August as Robert Shageev, the deputy commander of a Russian Black Sea fleet submarine brigade, walked past in naval uniform. He was killed on the spot.

Within hours, investigators had a suspect. Police detained Margarita Reutt, a 32-year-old resident of Sochi, the Russian resort city about 300 miles across the Black Sea from Sevastopol.

During a search, investigators said they had found a remote control they believed was used to detonate the bomb that killed Shageev, a former commander of Ukraine’s only submarine who switched allegiance to Russia in 2014 when Moscow annexed Crimea.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/ … der-crimea