Former Ukrainian parl speaker shot dead in Lviv

Former Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in the western city of Lviv on Saturday and a search was underway for the killer.

The Prosecutor General’s office said a gunman had fired several shots at Parubiy, killing him on the spot. The attacker fled and a manhunt was launched, it said.

Parubiy, 54, who was an MP, had been the parliamentary speaker from April 2016 to August 2019, and was one of the leaders of protests in 2013-14, calling for closer ties with the EU. He was also secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council from February to August 2014. Officials gave no indication whether the murder had any direct link to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko have just reported on the first known circumstances of a horrific murder in Lviv. Andriy Parubiy has been killed,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on X.