Russian agents killed after allegedly assassinating Ukraine colonel in bold daylight attack, Kyiv says
Ukraine’s security agency said Sunday it tracked down and killed Russian agents suspected of shooting one of its senior officers to death in the Ukrainian capital.
The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, said in a statement that the suspected Russian agents were killed in the Kyiv region after they offered resistance to arrest. A video released by the agency showed two bodies lying on the ground.
The agency said earlier that a man and a woman were suspected to be involved in Thursday’s assassination of Ivan Voronych, an SBU colonel, in a bold daylight attack that was caught on surveillance cameras.
Media reports claimed that Voronych was involved in covert operations in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine and reportedly helped organize Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last year.
Ukrainian media posted what appeared to be security camera footage showing a man walking through a parking lot with bags being attacked by another man who ran towards the victim.
The suspect fired five times at the victim with a silenced pistol, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing SBU sources. The SBU said the alleged assassins were given the coordinates of a hiding place where they found a pistol with a suppressor, according to the Reuters news agency.
The team that killed Voronych had spent time getting to know his daily schedule and routes, the SBU statement said.
Police in Kyiv previously released video from the crime scene and said that “criminal investigation officers, dog handlers and other services are working at the scene.”
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continued to rage on. After a series of massive attacks across Ukraine involving hundreds of exploding drones, Russia launched 60 drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. It said 20 of them were shot down and 20 others were jammed.
The Ukrainian authorities reported that four civilians were killed and 13 others injured in Russian attacks on the Donetsk and Kherson regions since Saturday.
High-profile Russians previously targeted
Moscow has accused Kyiv of orchestrating a spate of high-profile killings of Russian military officials or pro-Kremlin commentators since the Kremlin launched its invasion in February 2022.
In April, an explosive device ripped through a parked car near Moscow, killing a senior Russian general. Images from the scene posted on social media showed a blaze that gutted a car.
That attack came four months after another Russian general was killed along with his deputy in an explosion in Moscow.
The blast appeared to be similar to previous attacks on Russians linked to Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
Kyiv has in some cases claimed responsibility for previous attacks.
Last year, Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow in December. Ukrainian security sources told CBS News the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) killed Kirillov in a special operation.
After Kirillov’s killing, Putin made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies, saying: “We must not allow such very serious blunders to happen.”
In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.
Other attacks include the August 2022 car bombing of nationalist Darya Dugina and an explosion in a Saint Petersburg cafe in April 2023 that killed high-profile military correspondent Maxim Fomin, known as Vladlen Tatarsky. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.