KYIV – A day after an Odesa-born medic and sniper of Chechen heritage who fought in the Donbas war was fatally shot, the Security Service of Ukraine detained the alleged Kremlin-guided assassin of one of their own high-ranking officials.
It was the latest reminder for this war-weary country of 42.5 million people that the conventional battle in the easternmost regions of the Donbas is being waged also nationwide asymmetrically through alleged Moscow-controlled cells of agents, provocateurs and trained assassins.
A bullet to the head killed Amina Okuyeva, 34, on October 30 while she was in the passenger side of a vehicle driven by her husband, Adam Osmaev, who was also wounded by automatic gunfire, authorities said. The shootings occurred near the Kyiv Oblast village of Hlevakha.
Both devout opponents of war-mongering Russia, they had survived a previous assassination on their lives on June 1 in Kyiv. A Russian national, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, who was in the country with a Ukrainian passport bearing a different name, had carried out the assassination attempt. Posing as a journalist for the French newspaper Le Monde, he shot a pistol and wounded Mr. Osmaev on that day before Ms. Okuyeva shot him four times inside a passenger vehicle.
It was the couple’s third meeting with the phony journalist who survived the shooting. Authorities haven’t subsequently made announcements about the Russian’s murder attempt or how he obtained a Ukrainian passport.
On October 31, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it had detained a 29-year-old woman who planted a remote-controlled bomb that killed the deputy head of the spy agency’s counterintelligence unit in Donetsk Oblast on March 31.
A native of Russian-occupied Donetsk, suspect Yulia Prasolova was captured in the port city of Odesa, SBU chief Vasyl Hrytsak said in a briefing for journalists. He showed a video of the women allegedly planting an explosive device underneath the car and later watching it explode while standing on a curb at a safe distance.
According to Mr. Hrytsak, she was acting on orders from the Kremlin and trained in the non-government-controlled part of Donbas by “Russian curators” to carry out the slaying. During the ongoing Donbas war that Russia instigated in April 2014, the SBU colonel had been a thorn in Moscow’s side for successfully ferreting out covert Russian agents and cells in the region.
Others alleged to have been Russian targets have died in car explosions.
Col. Maksym Shapoval of military intelligence died in his vehicle when a bomb was set off in Kyiv in June. Authorities also said a “Russian trail” was behind the death. Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said that an attempt on National Police Deputy Chief Vyacheslav Abroskin’s life was recently thwarted, but gave no details in a briefing on November 1.
And Radical Party member Ihor Mosiychuk, a national deputy, was critically wounded in a car blast on October 25 in which two of his bodyguards – both off-duty police officers – died. Authorities have blamed the attack on Moscow without providing evidence. A fourth person, political scientist Vitaliy Bala, also was wounded in the blast.
Mr. Mosiychuk, who is still hospitalized, was the co-founder of the volunteer Azov Battalion and was imprisoned together with another Azov leader, Andriy Biletsky, during ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s truncated presidency.
“Of course these are assassination attempts, and the use of explosions serves a purpose because they create resonance,” said Yuriy Butusov, one of Ukraine’s premier war correspondents and a consultant to the Verkhovna Rada’s Defense Committee. “There are always quieter ways of killing people; these assassinations and how they’re done have a purpose.”
All together some 1,600 Ukrainian law enforcement personnel and high-ranking government officials have been targets of assassinations that were prevented by the authorities, the chief military prosecutor, Mr. Matios, said on November 1.
Abductions
Russia is currently holding at least 60 Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians as political prisoners, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group stated on October 29. The Foreign Affairs Ministry has issued a travel warning to Ukrainians to not visit Russia, citing danger of arbitrary detention or arrest.
“I would like to take the opportunity to urge the citizens of Ukraine to refrain from their intentions to visit the Russian Federation, as Russia has become a danger territory for Ukrainians,” said Vasyl Krylych, head of the ministry’s consular support department, at a news conference in Kyiv on October 18.
www.ssu.gov.ua
Col. Oleksandr Kharaberiush of the Security Service of Ukraine, the agency’s deputy head of counterintelligence in Donetsk, was killed in a car bomb explosion on March 31 in Mariupol.
One example is 19-year-old Pavlo Hryb, who was allegedly detained in Belarus by Russian authorities on August 24. His father said the incident was a Kremlin ruse created to lure him by orchestrating a meeting with a woman. Authorities in Belarus say they don’t know how the young man subsequently ended up in a Krasnodar prison in September.
His father, Ihor Hryb, has told journalists that his son was “openly critical of Russian interference in Ukraine on social media.” Russian authorities have prevented the Ukrainian consul in Rostov-on-Don from speaking to the teenager in Ukrainian during his visits, the Foreign Affairs Ministry states.
Russians have accused Pavlo Hryb of terrorism.
Two Ukrainian border guards were allegedly abducted on October 3 by Russians at the countries’ shared border in Sumy Oblast, where there are few border markings, Kyiv authorities say. They are currently in Moscow in pre-trial detention on charges of illegally crossing the national border.
The former bodyguard of nationalist Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh was allegedly abducted and surreptitiously taken to Russia in late August. Since Right Sector is considered an “extremist organization” in Russia on par with terrorist Islamic groups, 28-year-old Oleksandr Shumkov faces criminal charges.
The Kherson Oblast native was a Maidan activist and was last visited by the Ukrainian consul in October.
“Shumkov has managed to pass on that he ‘ended up in Russia as the result of a provocation,’ ” the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reported.