A Russian air force commander blamed for a lethal attack on a shopping centre in Ukraine has been found bludgeoned to death with a hammer.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said that it had assassinated Col Dmitry Golenkov, a senior officer in Russia’s 52nd heavy bomber regiment, with the “hammer of justice”.

Golenkov was said to be behind one of the most egregious attacks on a civilian target of the war. Images of a rocket striking the shopping centre, and its aftermath, were circulated widely.

Ukraine said on Monday: “A Russian Tu-22M3 pilot has been liquidated on the territory of the Russian Federation. His head was smashed with a hammer.”

The Tupolev Tu-22M3 is a modernised version of a Soviet-era long-range strategic bomber.

Golenkov’s body was found outside the village of Suponevo in the Bryansk region of Russia.

It was not clear how Ukraine carried out the killing, but Ukrainian special forces and partisans have been expanding operations inside occupied territory and Russia since the war began.

A video, shot at night, showed Golenkov’s body lying face down in shrubland, with his head covered in blood. He had been carrying a white plastic bag.

From his base in the neighbouring region of Kaluga, Golenkov ordered bombing missions to be flown over Ukraine.

One of his targets was the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk in June 2022, an attack that killed 22 people.

The shopping centre was full of shoppers on a Saturday afternoon at the time of the attack. Ukrainian officials said that there wasn’t a military target in the area.

Golenkov was also accused of being involved in a bombing raid in January 2023 against Dnipro in Ukraine that killed 46 people.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said that Golenkov had held the position of chief of staff of the aviation squadron, giving him an important planning role.

“He was involved in missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets,” it said.

The Russian ministry of defence has not commented.

Ukrainian military intelligence has developed a reputation for daring operations behind enemy lines and this is not the first time that it has claimed the assassination of Russian military personnel inside Russia.

In 2023, it used data from a fitness app to plan and execute the murder in Krasnodar of a Russian submarine captain who had fired missiles at Ukraine.

Dozens of collaborator officials in occupied parts of Ukraine have also been assassinated by Ukrainian agents.

In 2023, Ukraine’s military also planted a bomb inside a bust to kill a Russian military blogger at a street food café in St Petersburg.