By Tom Balmforth
(Reuters) -A senior Ukrainian security officer was gunned down in a residential parking lot in Kyiv on Thursday before his assailant fled on foot in broad daylight, according to authorities and video footage verified by Reuters.
Kyiv’s police force said it was working to identify the shooter and that “measures are being taken to detain him”. The slain agent was a colonel in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), an official told Reuters.
The SBU, a sprawling domestic spy agency which has a staff of thousands, said it had opened a criminal investigation into the murder of one of its employees in Kyiv’s southern Holosiivskyi district. They did not identify him.
The agency’s main remit covers security and counterintelligence, but since Russia’s 2022 invasion it has also played a prominent role in special operations against Moscow, including assassinations and sabotage attacks far behind the front line.
Neither the SBU nor the police gave possible motives for the killing.
“The Security Service and the National Police are taking a comprehensive set of measures to clarify all the circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice,” the SBU said in a statement.
CCTV footage circulated on Ukrainian social media showed a man in jeans leaving a residential building and walking to a car park where he was approached by another man, who appeared to fire at him repeatedly before running away.
Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video of the purported killing as Kyiv using the guard box, buildings and parking lot layout, which match file and satellite imagery of the area.
The date when the video was recorded was verified using the timestamp on the footage and Reuters reporting of the incident.
The Ukraiinska Pravda media outlet cited a source saying the assailant fired five rounds from a pistol and identified his victim as Ivan Voronych, an SBU colonel.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; additional reporting by Aaron McNicholas; editing by Alex Richardson)
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