Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the Batkivschyna party in Ukraine, believes an explosion at the party's office in Sumy on Saturday morning was a politically-motivated terrorist attack.
“The terrorist attack has political reasons. There are no other explanations as to why it was done so brutally,” Tymoshenko said at a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday.
Batkivschyna members will urge the Sumy regional security agencies to investigate the attack and find those responsible as soon as possible, she said.
“If there is no impartial investigation, the leaders of the Sumy party organization will publicly name those who threatened them,” Tymoshenko said, adding that Batkivschyna’s city leaders received telephone threats after having uncovered “a corruption agenda under the housing and utilities tariffs.”
As reported, the Batkivschyna party’s office located on the ground floor of a nine-storey apartment block in Pravda Newspaper Street in Sumy had been blown up in the early hours of Saturday.
The Sumy regional police department reported on Saturday that an anonymous telephone caller had informed the city police department at 02:55 a.m. that the Batkivschyna office had been blown up.
“The policemen who arrived at the scene determined that there were no human casualties, and a shock wave destroyed dividing walls, windows, and doors inside the office, and knocked some windows out of the house,” it said.
The Security Service has yet to decide whether to open a criminal investigation under Ukrainian Criminal Code Article 258, Part 1 (terrorist attack).
