Two Russian agents were killed after a top Ukrainian intelligence officer was gunned down on Thursday, according to Ukraine. The director of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), Vasyl Malyuk, informed in a video message that two Russian agents of the FSB’s security service had been located and “liquidated” after they had offered resistance to arrest on Sunday morning.
It follows that Col Ivan Voronych was gunned down multiple times in a Kyiv parking lot during the day, after being approached by an unknown attacker who escaped. The two agents killed on Sunday were “citizens of a foreign country,” Ukraine’s national police said, without elaborating. Moscow was not immediately available for comment.
CCTV video of the attack on 10 July – confirmed by news agency Reuters – depicted a man exiting a building in Kyiv’s southern Holosiivskyi district around 09:00 local time (06:00 GMT), with another man sprinting towards him.
The SBU added on Sunday that the suspects had been following Col Voronych’s movements before the attack, and were directed to send the coordinates of a place to hide where they discovered a pistol silencer.
It added that after he was shot, they then attempted to “lay low,” but were discovered through a joint investigation with national police. The SBU is primarily concerned with internal security and counter-intelligence, similar to the UK’s MI5. However, it has taken a leading role in sabotage raids and targeted assassinations far within Russia since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
BBC sources from inside Ukraine’s security agencies reported that the SBU had assassinated the senior Russian General Igor Kirillov in December 2024. In April, Gen Yaroslav Moskalik was murdered in a car bomb attack in Moscow, blamed by the Kremlin on Kyiv.
The security services of Ukraine have never officially accepted responsibility for the killings. This week’s killings follow Russian attacks on Ukraine, which have reached record levels. President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday stated that Ukraine was attacked by the largest Russian aerial assault ever. In June, Ukraine reported the greatest monthly civilian losses in three years, based on the UN report.
There has also been ongoing combat on the front lines, where Russia’s army continues to make incremental advances in eastern Ukraine and recaptures much of the Kursk region taken by Kyiv’s army in a surprise attack last summer.
