KYIV, Ukraine >> A Ukrainian former lawmaker whom the Kremlin had hand-picked to lead a puppet administration in Kyiv, Ukraine, was shot and wounded in occupied Crimea in an apparent assassination attempt, Ukrainian and Russian officials said Saturday.

The former lawmaker, Oleg Tsaryov, 53, a pro-Russian business executive who participated in Moscow’s invasion, was shot as part of a “special operation” carried out this past week by Ukraine’s domestic security agency, according to a senior Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

According to Western intelligence agencies, had the Russian invasion succeeded, the Kremlin would have installed Tsaryov as Ukraine’s leader.

Targeting prominent Russian and pro-Russian figures has long been part of the broader Ukrainian war effort and has continued apace even as fierce battles rage across a vast front line that has moved little in the past year.

After Tsaryov’s shooting, accounts of the attack also were given by the Russian authorities and by his family.

Vladimir Rogov, the Russian-appointed official in southern Ukraine, said that Tsaryov had been shot twice in an assassination attempt, had lost a lot of blood and was in “grave condition.”

Tsaryov’s family used his Telegram channel to issue a statement confirming the attack, which they said took place at about midnight Friday at a spa hotel in Yalta, southern Crimea, where he lives.

Ukraine’s director of military intelligence, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, told Reuters this year that his country would continue “eliminating enemies of their state.”

“We were doing it and we will be doing it,” he said.