Moscow car blast wounds former aide to Mykola Azarov

A car exploded in Moscow on Friday morning, wounding Sergei Zavorotny, a former adviser to Ukraine's former prime minister Mykola Azarov, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

The committee said Zavorotny was behind the wheel when the car exploded and had been taken to a city hospital for treatment. Russian officials opened a criminal investigation into the blast.

AFP images from the scene showed a burned and mangled car chassis, with investigators working behind red-and-white tape.

Zavorotny worked as an aide to Azarov, a pro-Russian former Ukrainian prime minister who resigned in 2014 during Ukraine's pro-European Maidan revolution. Azarov and then-president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014 after their security forces killed dozens of protesters in central Kyiv.

The Moscow blast came a day after a Russian colonel was killed in a car explosion in Saint Petersburg.