Reuters
CCTV footage shows SBU officials heading out shortly after 09:00 local time
A senior intelligence officer in Ukraine was shot during the day in Kiev, officials said.
Agents of Ukrainian Domestic Security Services (SBU) were shot several times in the parking lot after approaching an unidentified assailant who fled the scene, distributed on social media shows.
The spying agency did not identify the victim, but the Ukrainian media outlet named him Colonel Ivan Volonich.
The SBU is primarily related to internal security and anti-intelligence, similar to the UK MI5. However, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, it has also played a prominent role in assassinations and thwarting attacks within Russia.
Sources within Ukrainian security services previously told the media (including the BBC) that they were behind the murder of high-ranking Russian general Igor Kirillov in December 2024.
Earlier this year, General Jaroslav Moscarick was killed in a car bomb attack in Moscow. This is the incident in which the Kremlin denounced Kiev. Ukrainian security services have never officially admitted liability for death.
Neither the SBU nor the Kiev police motivated the shooting.
Ukrainian capital police said in a statement that officers arrived at the scene to find the body of the man injured by a bullet.
The officers are working to identify the perpetrator and said “measures are being taken to detain him.”
The SBU said it “is taking a comprehensive set of steps to clarify all circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrator to justice.”
CCTV footage – verified by news agency Reuters – shows jeans and a dark t-shirt wearing dark t-shirts leaving the building in the South Holosi-Bski district, just after 9:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Thursday.
He walks to a nearby car with a plastic bag and holdall and you can see another man running towards him.
Reuters
Unidentified assailant can be seen running towards the victim before shooting him several times
Online news site Ukrainska Pravda reports that the perpetrator used a pistol and shot SBU officials five times, citing an unknown source.
The obvious assassination follows what Ukraine described as the biggest Russian aerial attack when 728 drones and 13 cruises or ballistic missiles hit cities around the country.
At least two people were killed and 16 injured in an attack on Russia’s Ukrainian capital overnight on Thursday.
The strike that struck eight districts throughout the city included 18 missiles and 400 drones, officials said. Russia has been repeatedly accused of targeting private regions.
Meanwhile, the frontline battle continued, with Russian forces slowly making progress in western Ukraine, seizing control of some of the Russian Kursk regions that Ukrainian forces seized in shocking attacks last summer.
Russia currently rules around the fifth territory of Ukrainian territory, including the Southern Crimea Peninsula, which annexed in 2014.
After more than three years of war, efforts to negotiate a ceasefire have declined, and US President Donald Trump has become increasingly anxious about his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
