Tom Balmforth
(Reuters) – A senior Ukrainian security officer in Ukraine was shot dead in a residential parking lot in Kiev on Thursday, and his attackers fled the wide sunlight, according to authorities and video recorders verified by Reuters.
The Kiev police force said it was working to identify the shooter and was “taking measures to detain him”. An official told Reuters that the killing agent was a colonel from the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).
SBU, a sprawling domestic spy agency with thousands of staff, said it has already investigated the murder of one of its employees in the Holosiivskyi district in southern Kiev. They did not recognize him.
The agency's main terms of reference cover security and counterintelligence, but since the Russian invasion in 2022, it has also played a major role in special operations against Moscow, including assassinations and destructive attacks that lag far behind the frontlines.
Neither the SBU nor the police provided the motive for the killing.
“The Security Bureau and the National Police are taking a series of comprehensive measures to clarify all circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice,” the SBU said in a statement.
CCTV footage circulating on Ukrainian social media shows a man in jeans leaving a residential building and walking to a parking lot where another man approaches him, who appears to have fired repeatedly at him before running away.
Reuters was able to use guard boxes, buildings and parking lot layouts to confirm the alleged killing videos that matched the location of files and satellite images in the area.
Verified using the video and date of the record of the Reuters report events.
Ukraiinska Pravda media outlets listed a source saying the attacker fired five rounds from the pistol and identified his victim as SBU Colonel Ivan Voronych.
(Reported by Tom Balmforth; other reports by Aaron McNicholas; edited by Alex Richardson)
