Murders of two journalists, ex-lawmaker spook Kyiv

Two of the victims, ex-lawmaker Oleh Kalashnikov and journalist-writer Oles Buzina, were known for their strong criticism of Ukraine’s pro-Western political leadership. Both favored closers relations with Russia.

They were shot dead within a 24-hour time span: the first late on April 15, the second at 2 p.m. on April 16.

A third victim, journalist Serhiy Sukhobok, worked for pro-Ukrainian publications. He was killed on April 13.

News of the assassination-style killings further rattled a capital already shaken by increasingly frequent bomb threats that have routinely shut down underground subway stations.

The murders of Kalashnikov, a former political ally of ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych, and Buzina have been alternately blamed on nationalists from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides. They follow a chain of recent suspected suicides by former allies of Yanukovych, who fled to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014, after feeling power at the height of last year’s EuroMaidan Revolution.

Speculation has grown that the murders and reported suicides are somehow linked to the fugitive ex-leader’s role in stoking protests to counter the EuroMaidan Revolution.

Buzina was shot with a TT pistol in the head and body in the courtyard of his apartment building, said Oleksandr Tereshchuk, head of Kyiv’s police department, as cited by Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya. The killers were in a dark blue Ford Focus car with either a Latvian or Belarusian license plate, Anton Gerashchenko, a member of parliament and a former aide to the interior minister, said on Facebook.

The main version considered by investigators is Buzina’s professional career, Tereshchuk said.

Buzina’s murder follows a scandal involving his January-March tenure this year as editor-in-chief of Kyiv’s Segodnya daily newspaper, which is owned by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man. Buzina claimed superiors prohibited him from criticizing President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Gerashchenko wrote that Buzina’s murder could have been ordered by Russia. “These murders (of Buzina and Kalashnikov) are similar,” he said. “I don’t rule out that these murders were organized by Russian intelligence agencies to create an atmosphere of terror and hysteria in Kyiv.”

Another version is that Buzina and Kalashnikov were killed to prevent them from giving testimony in the case against pro-Yanukovych henchmen, the so-called “titushki,” who are accused of assaulting and even killing EuroMaidan protesters.

Police experts examine the body of prominent journalist Oles Buzina, 45, after he was shot to death in Kyiv on April 16.

“It seems like the shooting of witnesses in the Anti-Maidan case continues,” Gerashchenko speculated.

But Serhiy Horbatyuk, head of the special investigations department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, told the Kyiv Post that Buzina was not a witness in the Anti-Maidan cases and had no links to them.

Viktoria Syumar, a lawmaker with the prime minister’s People’s Front party, linked the murder to Russia’s preparations for a 70-year anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.

“This parade of political assassinations is not accidental,” she wrote on Facebook. “It’s not just an attempt to settle scores, it’s a special operation that will be used to wage a political and information war and to escalate the situation before Victory Day on May 9.”

Russian commentators and analysts, on the other hand, have blamed the murder on Ukrainian nationalists.

Buzina could have been killed either by Russian intelligence agencies to escalate the situation or by Ukrainian radicals as revenge for his political position, Viktoria Svitlova, an acquaintance of Buzina who used to work with him at the Kievskie Vedomosti newspaper, told the Kyiv Post.

A 45-year-old native of Kyiv, Buzina was widely known for his sympathies for Russia and loathing for Ukrainian nationalism.

In the 2012 parliamentary election Buzina ran as a candidate of the Russian Bloc, a pro-Russian party. He has also featured in political talk shows on Russian television and wrote a book lambasting Ukraine’s most famous poet and national bard, Taras Shevchenko.

Kalashnikov was shot dead outside the door to his Kyiv apartment.

The 52-year-old former parliament deputy representing the pro-Yanukovych Party of Regions in 2006-2007 was best known as the organizer of rallies that the part itself, at times, tried to distance itself from.

In 2011, he organized incessant loudspeaker protests against former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovych’s political rival, when she was on trial on politically motivated charges. For months, recordings of him reciting slogans slamming Tymoshenko were played daily on Kyiv’s main street, Khreshchatyk.

Tymoshenko served more than two years in prison on trumped-up political charges before being freed once Yanukovych left power.

During last year’s revolution, Kalashnikov was seen giving speeches at the AntiMaidan camp glorifying Yanukovych and slamming the EuroMaidan participants by calling them “hysterical” and “driven by drugs.” When asked about AntiMaidan during his last interview for the 1+1 TV Channel in early March, he said he “never did anything illegal.”

Serhiy Sukhobok

He never held an official position after 2007, when his parliament term ended. In 2006, he was caught up in scandal when he attacked a television cameraman for recording him, receiving public condemnation even from his fellow Party of Regions politicians.

In recent months Kalashnikov had been preparing a World War II commemoration rally for Victory Day on May 9. According to his wife, he was killed when returning home from the printing house where he oversaw the production of leaflets for the event.

Russian and Ukrainian opposition media have focused on Kalashnikov’s war memorial activity as a motive for his killing. In February Kalashnikov claimed was threatened after placing flowers on a World War II memorial.

Buzina was an opponent of the EuroMaidan, but there never was any evidence of his role in AntiMaidan.

Some speculate that the Kalashnikov murder could have been organized by Kalashnikov’s former allies to prevent him from leaking information to the current government authorities.

In the March interview, Kalashnikov claimed that investigators never showed any interest in him. But later in the month, Olga Chervakova, a member of parliament, asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate pro-separatist statements made by Kalashnikov.

Lawmaker Borislav Bereza has said, citing his sources in law enforcement agencies, said Kalashnikov expressed readiness to testify against his former Party of Regions allies.

Kalashnikov’s murder follows a spate of recent deaths among former Yanukovych allies, some of whom were potentially facing criminal charges.

Authorities believe former lawmaker Mykhailo Chechetov killed himself by jumping from his apartment window on Feb. 28. Shortly before, he was questioned by prosecutors probing controversial adoption of the so-called “dictatorship laws” on Jan. 16, 2014 by parliament.

Kalashnikov was among the few former Party of Region members who attended Chechetov’s funeral.

Five other former officials who were actively linked to Yanukovych’s rule have died in recent months. Suicide is suspected in all but one of the deaths.

The dead include former Melitopol Mayor Serhiy Walter, who was suspected of being active in the drug and weapons trades. The rest of the former officials weren’t under investigation.

On March 9, Stanislav Melnyk, a former Party of Regions lawmaker, was found dead in his house. Police said he shot himself with a hunting rifle.

On March 12, Oleksandr Peklushenko, the former governor of Zaporizhyzhya under Yanukovych, was found dead, shot in the neck. Police classified the case as a suicide.

This was soon followed by the death of Serhiy Melnychuk, a city district prosecutor from Odesa, who was beaten and thrown out a window of his apartment. The case was first viewed as a suicide and then reclassified as murder after witnesses said they heard fighting.

Also, in January, former first deputy head of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsya, Mykola Serhiyenko, who left the position shortly following the change in power in 2014, was found hanged.