Ukraine's military intelligence, partisans blow up bus carrying Chechen soldiers in occupied Melitopol

Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) conducted a joint operation with local partisans to blow up a bus carrying five Chechen soldiers from the Russian-backed Akhmat unit in occupied Melitopol, HUR reported on Aug. 2.

The southern city of Melitopol in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast has been under Russian occupation since March 2022.

As a result of a successful joint operation between intelligence officers and partisans, a minibus carrying five Akhmat soldiers exploded on the outskirts of Melitopol, HUR said. All five soldiers aboard were killed in the blast.

The explosion also wounded two Russian soldiers in a nearby vehicle and destroyed an electronic warfare (EW) system, the agency said.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify HUR's claims.

Video footage uploaded to the agency's Telegram channel shows the moment of the blast.

0:00 / 1× Video footage purporting to show the explosion of a minibus carrying five Chechen soldiers in Russian-occupied Melitopol published by HUR on Aug. 2, 2025. (HUR / Telegram)

Earlier this month, HUR said it conduced a joint operation with local partisans to destroy a Russian command post in occupied Melitopol on July 10. The operation reportedly killed five Russian soldiers.

In May, HUR reported that four Akhmat officers were killed in a car bombing near the occupied city of Skadovsk in Kherson Oblast. HUR did not claim direct responsibility for the bombing, but said that "there will be just retribution for every war crime committed against the Ukrainian people."

Ukrainian partisan groups, alongside Ukrainian intelligence officers, routinely execute covert missions within Russian-occupied territories to degrade the operational capacity of Russian forces.