Ukraine police chief suspects Russia involved in killing of former parliamentary speaker
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Investigators inspecting the body of former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy on Aug 30.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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KYIV - Ukraine’s police chief said on Sept 1 he suspects Russian involvement in the murder of former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy
National police head Ivan Vyhivskyi said the gunman had disguised himself as a courier and fired eight times during the Aug 30 attack in the western city of Lviv.
“He spent a long time preparing, watching, planning, and finally pulling the trigger... There is Russian involvement,” he said on Facebook, without providing evidence.
Russia, which has been at war with Ukraine since early 2022, has not commented, and there has been no claim of responsibility for the killing of 54-year-old Mr Parubiy, a leading figure in protests that helped to oust a pro-Russian president in 2014.
Mr Vadym Onyshchenko, regional head of Ukraine’s SBU domestic intelligence agency, said the murder looked like a contract killing.
“We have information indicating the possible involvement of the Russian Federation’s security services in organising the murder,” he said in a statement published by the SBU.
Mr Parubiy was parliamentary speaker from 2016 to 2019 and helped lead protests in 2013 and 2014 that led to the ousting of Ukraine’s then pro-Russian president, Mr Viktor Yanukovich.
Mr Parubiy was also secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council from February to August 2014, a period when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula and Moscow-backed separatists began fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine.
Both countries have accused each other of attempted or successful assassinations during their war, including a senior Russian general blown up in Moscow and a Ukrainian intelligence colonel gunned down in Kyiv in July.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sept 1 it was “a horrific murder” that impacted “security in a country at war”.
The suspected shooter was detained overnight in the Khmelnytskyi region, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
“I will only say that the crime was carefully planned: The victim’s movements were studied, a route was mapped out, and an escape plan was thought through,” he said on Telegram.
The suspect was a 52-year-old resident of Lviv, according to the Prosecutor-General’s Office.
Police published two photographs from the arrest showing special forces officers holding a shirtless, handcuffed man. REUTERS
