Zelenskyy demanded answers from SBU and military intelligence after Berezniaky shooting, adviser says
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Following reports of a shooting in Berezniaky, Yuriia Shumskoho Street in Kyiv was closed to traffic (Photo: Suspilne News/Oleksandr Mahula)
Ukraine’s Security Service and Defense Intelligence must explain the shooting incident in Kyiv on Sept. 2 involving representatives of both agencies, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, according to his communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn.
Lytvyn said Zelenskyy “came down hard on the heads of the relevant agencies” after the shooting in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district.
In particular, the president demanded that they “provide information to society, because the agencies had remained silent,” Lytvyn said.
The heads of the SBU and military intelligence, HUR, are Oleksandr Poklad and Oleh Ivashchenko, respectively.
Kyiv shooting on Sept. 2
Reports of gunfire in the Berezniaky residential area began circulating online overnight and into the morning of Sept. 2. The Kyiv City State Administration later said traffic had been blocked on Yuriia Shumskoho Street.
The SBU later said it had prevented an assassination attempt against one of the leaders of the Russian opposition movement who had arrived in Kyiv for Ukraine’s Independence Day.
That statement came after, on Sept. 1, Aleksandr Fortuna, chief of staff of the Russian Volunteer Corps unit within HUR, said in a public statement that the corps’ deputy combat commander, Stepan Kaplunov, had been abducted in Kyiv.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, the shooting in Kyiv was connected to his disappearance.
The shooting involving security officers also drew a response from the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Budanov. He called for a “thorough and impartial” investigation into the incident and said that the State Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Prosecutor General were already handling the case.
“No one has the right to abduct servicemen with impunity, open fire on the streets of our cities, or give and carry out criminal orders,” Budanov said.
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