Ukrainian spy colonel gunned down in Kyiv, assailant flees

By Tom Balmforth

(Reuters) -A elder Ukrainian information serviceman was gunned down successful a residential parking batch successful Kyiv connected Thursday earlier his assailant fled connected ft successful wide daylight, according to authorities and video footage verified by Reuters.

Kyiv's constabulary unit said it was moving to place the shooter and that "measures are being taken to detain him". The slain cause was a colonel successful the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), an authoritative told Reuters.

The SBU, a sprawling home spy bureau which has thousands of staff, said it had opened a transgression probe into the execution of 1 of its employees successful Kyiv's confederate Holosiivskyi district. They did not place him.

The agency's remit covers information and counterintelligence, but since Russia's 2022 penetration it has besides played a salient relation successful peculiar operations against Moscow, including assassinations and sabotage attacks.

Those see an bonzer drone cognition codenamed Spider's Web that targeted Russian strategical craft astatine bases hundreds of miles from Ukraine, and the assassination of a apical Russian wide successful Moscow utilizing a weaponry hidden successful a scooter.

Neither the SBU nor the constabulary mentioned imaginable motives for the sidesplitting successful Kyiv.

"The Security Service and the National Police are taking a broad acceptable of measures to clarify each the circumstances of the transgression and bring the perpetrators to justice," the SBU said successful a statement.

Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda cited a root saying the assailant fired 5 rounds from a pistol. It identified his unfortunate arsenic Ivan Voronych, an SBU colonel.

Some pro-Kremlin subject bloggers cheered the decease of the colonel. Alexander Kots, a Russian warfare correspondent, said helium hoped the Russian information services were down his death. "The force indispensable consciousness acrophobic connected its ain territory."

Russian officials person not publically commented.

CCTV footage circulated connected Ukrainian societal media showed a antheral successful jeans leaving a residential gathering and walking to a car parkland wherever helium was approached by different man, who fired astatine him repeatedly earlier moving away.

Reuters was capable to corroborate the determination of the video of the purported sidesplitting arsenic a neighbourhood successful Kyiv, utilizing the defender box, buildings and parking batch layout, which lucifer record and outer imagery of the area.

The day erstwhile the video was recorded was verified utilizing the timestamp connected the footage and Reuters reporting of the incident.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; further reporting by Aaron McNicholas; editing by Alex Richardson and Andrew Heavens)