Ukraine’s security services have released pictures and video showing the site where a lawmaker turned “top traitor” was assassinated last week.
Illia Kyva, a former member of the now-banned pro-Russian party “Opposition Platform - For Life” was killed near Moscow on Wednesday.
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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.
“He was eliminated with small arms,” the source said, calling the ex-politician “a top traitor, collaborator and propagandist.”
One of the new pictures shows Kyva’s body lying face down in the snow with flecks of blood surrounding him.
Another shows a knife, gun and binoculars on a tree. A source told Ukrinform: “This is a signal to all traitors and war criminals who have flipped to the enemy side.”
“Remember: Russia will not protect you. As Vasyl Maliuk, head of the SBU, said earlier, death is the only prospect that awaits the enemies of Ukraine.”
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Andriy Yusov, spokesman for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service (HUR), also confirmed Kyva’s death last week, saying: “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.”
The video released by the SBU shows the observation post used by the assassins. A man can be seen walking in the distance, but it is not clear if this is Kyva himself or someone else.
The SBU source said his movement routes, daily routine, and habits had been studied in detail.
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.”
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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