Just two days after protests took place in Kyiv demanding the ouster of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, his office was fired at on Nov. 2 at 10 p.m. while a meeting was under way inside. No one was hurt.
Olena Hitlyanska, a spokeswoman for the
Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, announced the news on her Facebook page
under the heading, “Horror!!!”
According to Hitlyanska, the shooting occurred
as a “meeting was taking place between the head of the agency in his
office and his subordinates.”
SBU investigators were sent to the scene.
Hitlyanska told Interfax-Ukraine that a
criminal case had been opened over the matter on the charge of endangering the
life of a civil servant. The charge carries a maximum life in prison sentence.
In mid-October Shokin told Fakty newspaper
that he sleeps in different safe houses during the week for safety reasons,
adding that he fears attempts on his life and drives in an armored Mercedes
that the prosecutor’s office leased for a year.
“(My) bodyguards periodically change license
plate numbers on the car, as well as the routes I take and places of sleep. I
truly, for safety purposes, stay in different apartments,” Shokin told Fakty in
an interview published on Oct. 15.
The incident of Nov. 2 comes amid growing
public resentment of Shokin for his inability to prosecute serious crime and
his alleged obstruction of investigations into high-level corruption, including
within his own ranks.
On Oct. 31, a group of about 200 protesters
drove to President Petro Poroshenko’s home to demand that he fire Shokin. The
“Poroshokin” demonstrators accused the prosecutor general of
derailing corruption cases, protecting corrupt officials and obstructing the investigation into the murders of
more than 100 protesters during the EuroMaidan Revolution.
A petition by
lawmakers to vote on Shokin’s ouster has so far gathered some 120 out of the
required 150 signatures in parliament as of Nov. 2.
A video taken by Ukrainian journalists shows the commotion outside of Viktor Shokin’s office after several shots were fired at the windows on Nov. 2.
