Former Ukrainian lawmaker who defected is killed near Moscow

A former Ukrainian lawmaker who had settled in Russia and was convicted of treason in Ukraine was shot and killed in a village outside Moscow, Russian investigators said Wednesday.

The 46-year-old lawmaker, Illia Kyva, who had called on Ukraine to surrender when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, was discovered in the park of a gated community 40 kilometers west of Moscow, Russian investigators said in a statement. They said Mr Kyva died on the spot after being shot by an unknown person, and that authorities had opened a criminal investigation into the killing.

Russian investigators did not mention possible Ukrainian involvement, but a Ukrainian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said Mr. Kyva was killed as part of a special operation orchestrated by the State Security Service of Ukraine.

“The criminal was eliminated with small arms,” the official said.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence, said on the country’s national television that Mr. Kyva was “done” and that “such a fate will befall other traitors of Ukraine, as well as the accomplices of the Putin regime.” ”

Mr Kyva was a controversial figure in Russia and Ukraine. During his turbulent political career, he switched sides from an anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalist to one who advocated Russian control of Ukraine. For example, in 2021, he called President Vladimir V. Putin “a great ruler.”

Mr Kyva, a former leader of a volunteer team that fought pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, left Ukraine before the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion. He has since settled in Russia and became a frequent commentator on Russian state television.

In March 2022, Mr Kyva was expelled from the Ukrainian parliament, which he had joined in 2019 as a representative of a Russian-leaning political party. He called on Ukraine to surrender and said that the Russian army was on “a sacred mission to liberate a brotherly nation,” referring to Ukraine. In contrast, Mr. Kyva spoke on Ukrainian television in 2017 said that “all lovers of the Russian world” would be “removed from sight of Ukraine.”

In November, a court in Kiev sentenced him in absentia to 14 years in prison on charges including treason and attempted violent overthrow of the government.

Targeting prominent Russian and pro-Russian figures has long been part of the broader Ukrainian war effort and has continued unabated even as fierce fighting rages across a vast frontline that has seen little movement in the past year.

In October, Oleg Tsaryov, another former Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, survived an assassination attempt in Crimea. In May, Zakhar Prilepin, a popular Russian nationalist writer and politician, survived a car bomb attack in a village in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region.

Other deaths that appeared to be homicides were successful.

In August 2022, a car bomb attack in a Moscow suburb killed Daria Dugina, daughter of an aggressive anti-invasion supporter. U.S. intelligence officials said they believed representatives of the Ukrainian government had approved the attack.

Last April, a prominent Russian military blogger, Maksim Fomin, who was widely known by his pseudonym Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed after a bomb exploded in a St. Petersburg restaurant where he was meeting with his supporters. Russia claimed that Ukrainian special services were behind the attack. Ukraine has denied any involvement.

In July, a Russian submarine commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was shot while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.