Illia Kyva, a former lawmaker in Ukraine’s parliament from the now-banned pro-Russian party “Opposition Platform - For Life” was killed in Russia on Wednesday.
A Kyiv Post source in the special services reported that this was a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) special operation against Kyva, who had defected to Russia at the beginning of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
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“He was eliminated with small arms,” the source said, calling the ex-politician “a top traitor, collaborator and propagandist.”
According to Russian media, Kyva's body was found in a house in the suburbs of Moscow.
Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service (HUR), also confirmed Kyva’s death: “Such a fate will await other traitors of Ukraine.”
Yusov called Kyva “one of the biggest scumbags, traitors and collaborators” and said his death was “justice.”
Kyva fled Ukraine on the eve of the Russian invasion, allegedly for a vacation in Europe. Later he acknowledged that he was in Russia.
He was a regular guest on Russian TV channels focused on spreading Russian propaganda, where he supported Russia's war against Ukraine and called on Ukrainians to surrender.
Kyva claimed that Ukraine “is enslaved and brought to its knees by the West, permeated by Nazism, and it has no future.”
He called Russia’s invasion a “necessary liberation.”
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Kyva was also thought to be close to Viktor Medvedchuk, a former Ukrainian politician, oligarch and close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In Ukraine, Kyva was accused of treason and sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison.
On the same day that Kyiva was killed, AFP reported that a Russian-backed politician who served as a proxy lawmaker in Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region was killed in a car bombing attack.
“In the afternoon of Dec. 6 2023, Oleg Popov, a deputy of the first and third convocations of the People's Council of the Luhansk People's Republic, was killed in Luhansk as a result of a detonation in a car of an unidentified device,” Russian investigators said.
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