A series of attacks on the mayors of big Ukrainian cities unfolded in the last week, showing that Ukraine's violence is spreading far beyond the war-torn east.
Kremenchuk Mayor Oleh Babayev, who led a city of more than 200,000 people in Poltava Oblast, was shot dead the morning of July 26.
Babayev was a member of Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party. When in December some activists of the EuroMaidan Revolution were detained, he supported them and called on top government officials to resign.
There are no arrests reported in the Kremenchuk murder.
But that’s not the only violence to beset city officials, although the other incident injured no one.
On July 25, the night before the Kremenchuk murder, the house of Lviv mayor Andriy Sadovyi was attacked with an anti-tank missile. The missile broke some windows and damaged the roof, but didn’t injure anyone. The mayor was gone with his family for a weekend to Carpathian Mountains when the attack occured.
President Petro Poroshenko ordered prompt investigations to be conducted in both Babayev’s murder and the possible attempt on Sadoviy’s life.
According to Anton Herashchenko, advisor to the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Babayev left his home around 10 a.m.wearing a sweatsuit on the day of the murder. He also carried a garbage bag. He stopped and got out of his Mercedes – probably, to throw out garbage, authorities speculate – when he was shot three times from another car.
Babayev died instantly.
“There is no proof that the two attacks on the mayors (Babayev and Sadoviy) were planned synchronically. Most likely, they are not linked,” said Herashchenko.
These two incidents come after attacks earlier in the year on eastern Ukraine city officials.
Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes was a victim of attempted murder. He was shot in the back when he was jogging on April 28. Kernes went to Israel for treatment, and is now back in Ukraine. At the time, separatist movement was on the rise in Kharkiv. In the end, the city escaped the fate of its neighbor Luhansk and Donetsk, that became the centers of the rebellion of the Russia-backed terrorists.
Other attacks happened in Dnipropetrovsk.
Some 16 Kremlin-backed terrorists are suspected of scheming to murder Dnipropetrovsk Oblast deputy governor Borys Filatov and commander of the volunteer Dnipro Battalio Yuriy Bereza. On June 24, the suspects were arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine .
In a post on his Facebook page, Filatov hinted that the attempt on his life and the attack on Sadoviy’s house may be linked.
“They wanted to attack us with a grenade launcher too,” Filatov wrote.
Volodymyr Fesenko, political analyst and head of Penta political studies center, said the attacks are the most violent signs of the nation’s instability.
“Destabilization of the country can be one of the purposes of these crimes, but most likely they are not connected,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post.
Fesenko said the attacks were not designed to disrupt future parliamentary elections because so few officials were targeted.
“Attempts on Babayev and Kernes could have business and personal” reasons, added Fesenko. “The current political crisis is good time for criminal structures to pursue their own ends and go unnoticed.”
Kyis Post staff writer Iryna Yeroshko can be reached at [email protected]
