KHARKIV, Ukraine -- A senior special-police officer loyal to Kyiv has been injured along with his wife in a car-bomb blast in the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Police told RFE/RL that Andriy Yanholenko and his wife, Inna, were hospitalized after a bomb under Yanholenko's car exploded on March 6.
City officials said they suffered shrapnel wounds.
Yanholenko commands Slobozhanshchyna, a police battalion whose members refused to participate in a crackdown on the protests that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
An aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Facebook that authorities were treating the blast as a suspected terrorist act.
Four people have been killed and 14 wounded in three apparent bombings since January 19 in Kharkiv, which lies northwest of the site of the conflict between government forces and Russian-backed rebels.
Ukrainian authorities have blamed a series of bomb blasts in Kharkiv and the southern city of Odesa on Russia and the rebels.
