Exiled mayor: Ukrainian resistance in occupied Melitopol detonates car with looters.

Ukrainian partisans in occupied Melitopol blew up a car with Russian occupiers, who regularly robbed empty apartments in the city, Melitopol's exiled Mayor Ivan Fedorov said on Oct.

20. "They were regularly singling out and looting empty apartments in the city. This time, our resistance was tracking them," Fedorov wrote on his Telegram channel.

"The explosion happened during one of their 'hunts' in the Aviamistechko district while they were loading looted goods into the car." Russian media based in Melitopol reported that the explosion occurred in Hvardiiska Street and was caused by a "short circuit" in the vehicle, which allegedly ignited the fuel. The fire was promptly extinguished, and there were no casualties, the Russian news portal Lenta Novostey Melitopolya claimed.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by widespread looting of civilian property by Russian troops. This has been documented by Ukrainian authorities and human rights organizations. Melitopol, a city with a pre-war population of about 150,000 people, has been occupied since March 2022.

The Ukrainian resistance has been active here since then, detonating a train carrying fuel and arms for the Russian military earlier this month.

News Editor

Martin Fornusek is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. He has previously worked as a news content editor at the media company Newsmatics and is a contributor to Euromaidan Press. He also volunteers as an editor and translator at the Czech-language version of Ukrainer.

Martin studied at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia, holding a bachelor's degree in security studies and history and a master's degree in conflict and democracy studies.