KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said Monday that it had arrested a suspect in the killing of a former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker, accusing Moscow of involvement in one of the most high-profile killings since the war began.
“We know that this crime was not accidental. There is a Russian trace in it,” Ukraine’s police chief, Ivan Vyhivskyi, said in a statement that included a blurred photo of the suspect taken during his arrest. Police did not identify him or disclose a motive, and they did not explain or provide evidence for why they believed he was linked to Russia.
Later Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, said in a statement that the killing “has the hallmarks of a contract killing” and that there was “operational information indicating possible involvement of the Russian Federation’s special services” in organizing it. It gave no further details.
Vyhivskyi said the suspect had carefully prepared the attack, disguising himself as a delivery worker before opening fire on the Ukrainian politician, Andriy Parubiy, in broad daylight on a street in the western city of Lviv. “Eight shots. Cold-blooded cruelty,” Vyhivskyi said.
After the attack, the statement added, the suspect “changed clothes, got rid of the weapon” and hid in the western Khmelnytskyi region, near the Lviv region. He was found by police after a 36-hour search.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the arrest and said that “all circumstances of this terrible murder must be clarified.”
The killing Saturday of Parubiy, who still served as a lawmaker in Ukraine’s main opposition party, sent chills through the country, where political assassinations have been rare since Russia invaded more than three years ago. It echoed the killing of another politician, Iryna Farion, in Lviv last year in similar circumstances.
Both Parubiy and Farion had publicly held strong nationalist and anti-Russian views, advocating a complete severing of ties with Moscow. That has fueled suspicion that their killings were orchestrated by Russia.
In particular, Parubiy played a prominent role in the 2014 Maidan protests that led to the ouster of Ukraine’s last pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Parubiy led the protesters’ security forces, which battled with Ukraine’s riot police, a role that earned him broad respect at home but drew the ire of pro-Kremlin figures.
Earlier this year, Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian activist known for his nationalist views and work to raise funds for the army, narrowly escaped death after a woman opened fire on him as he exited a residential building. A woman was arrested and the SBU said she had been recruited by Russian intelligence services.
The two politicians’ nationalist connections would also give their deaths potential propaganda value for Russia, which has long promoted the false claim that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis — even though Zelenskyy is Jewish and far-right parties won only a single seat in the most recent parliamentary elections.
Parubiy founded the far-right Social National Party of Ukraine in the 1990s, later renamed Svoboda, which Farion went on to join. Parubiy later shifted to the center right and became a member of Ukraine’s main opposition party today, European Solidarity, led by Zelenskyy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko.
Parubiy served as secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council in the first half of 2014, after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and launched its first invasion of eastern Ukraine. He served as the speaker of parliament from 2016 to 2019.
Ukrainian political leaders publicly mourned Parubiy’s death over the weekend, depicting him as a crucial figure in Ukraine’s effort to break away from Moscow’s influence.
On Monday, several hundred people — some draped in Ukrainian flags, others dressed in traditional embroidered shirts — gathered for a memorial to Parubiy in Ukraine’s Independence Square, on the same ground where he had led protesters during the 2014 uprising.
On this square were written “the pages of our history,” said one of the organizers of the memorial, who did not identify himself, speaking to the crowd through a public-address system. “These are also the pages of Andriy Parubiy’s own biography.”
“We have gathered here for Andriy Parubiy’s final Maidan,” he said.
Parubiy will be buried in Lviv on Tuesday.