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Ukrainian colonel killed by car bomb in Kiev Ukrainian military intelligence officer killed by car bomb in Kiev
(about 1 hour later)
A colonel in Ukraine’s military intelligence has been killed by a car bomb in central Kiev, the defence ministry said, describing the incident as a “terrorist act”. A high-ranking Ukrainian military intelligence official has been killed by a car bomb in Kiev in what authorities are calling an act of terrorism.
Police said an explosive device in the vehicle blew up at 8.16am local time while the car was moving, killing the driver and wounding a passerby. An explosive device destroyed the Mercedes being driven by Col Maksim Shapoval at 8.15am local time, police said.
“As a result of [the explosion] a member of the defence ministry’s main intelligence department, Colonel Maksim Shapoval, was killed,” the ministry said in a statement. The car’s bonnet was blown open and its roof and driver side door almost completely destroyed, video footage from the scene showed.
The police and the ministry did not give further details or say who could be behind the attack. “The picture of the crime looks like it was a planned act of terrorism,” interior ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko told local media. The military prosecutor said his office would lead an investigation.
Since fighting with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014, the number of incidents involving explosives outside the conflict zone has increased, but car bombs are relatively rare. Police said a female passerby with shrapnel wounds to her legs received medical treatment after the explosion, as did an elderly man who suffered shrapnel wounds to his neck.
In July 2016 a prominent investigative journalist, Pavel Sheremet, was killed in Kiev by an explosive device in his car. According to the defence ministry, Shapoval was a colonel in military intelligence. The Ukrainian Pravda newspaper quoted law enforcement sources saying he had headed a special forces unit.
Yury Butusov, editor of the Censor.net news website, said in a Facebook post that Shapoval’s unit had fought in eastern Ukraine, where a conflict with Russia-backed separatists that broke out in 2014 has killed more than 10,000 people. He claimed Russian intelligence could have killed Shapoval.
Shapoval’s death comes almost a year after prominent journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed by a similar explosion in Kiev as he drove to work. A documentary film released last month revealed evidence suggesting that Ukraine’s spy agency may have witnessed the planting of the car bomb that killed Sheremet. No one has been brought to justice in the murder case.
A number of other public figures have also been assassinated in and around Kiev in recent years. Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian MP who fled to Ukraine, was shot dead in central Kiev in March. Pro-Russian journalist Oles Buzina was shot in a drive-by in 2015, and lawyer Yuri Grabovsky, who had represented a Russian soldier captured in Ukraine, was found dead with a gunshot wound in 2016.