A top official in Ukraine’s SBU security service was shot dead in Kyiv broad daylight today by an unknown assassin who immediately fled the scene.
Colonel Ivan Voronych was walking through the Holosiivskyi district of Ukraine’s capital city this morning when a man approached him at around 9am local time, according to a report by Ukrainskaya Pravda.
A masked assassin, wearing a black t-shirt and shorts, was seen on CCTV footage springing out from behind a car and blasting the 50-year-old colonel at point-blank range with a pistol as he crossed a road.
He is believed to have fired five shots from a silenced weapon before turning and fleeing.
The CCTV footage clearly shows the assailant sprinting down a road away from the murder scene still clutching his pistol.
Moments before, he was captured administering an execution shot to the colonel who lay bleeding on the floor behind a car.
Colonel Voronych was reportedly a senior operative in the department of the SBU’s special operations centre. He suffered several gunshot wounds and died at the scene.
‘A criminal case has been opened into the murder of an SBU employee in the Holosiivskyi district of Kyiv,’ the SBU said in a statement to Ukrainskaya Pravda.
‘The Security Service and the National Police are taking comprehensive measures to clarify all the circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice.’
The SBU did not immediately confirm the name of the victim, but several news outlets, as well as former SBU officer Roman Chervinsky, named the deceased as Colonel Voronych.
‘Today was a loss for me personally and for many patriotic SBU employees. A worthy officer (colonel) Voronych Ivan Ivanovich was killed by an enemy saboteur,’ Chervinsky wrote on social networks.
According to him, Voronych was responsible for launching operations in the SBU that ‘are now creating many problems for Russians’.
The identity of the suspect and their motives remain unclear.
