One person was killed and two injured in a car bombing in the heart of Kyiv near Bessarabska Square on Sept. 8. One of the injured is a child.
The man killed in the blast is Ali Timayev, also known as Timur Mahauri, a Chechen with Georgian citizenship. Timayev, 39, reportedly fled Chechnya after fighting in the Russian-Chechen wars. In Ukraine, he reportedly participated in the fighting in the Donbas as part of a Chechen volunteer battalion on the Ukrainian government side.
The black Toyota Camry with a Georgian registration plate exploded while driving Pavla Skoropadskoho Street near Arena shopping mall, between Basseyna and Velyka Vasylkivska Streets at 6:10 p.m. The bomb was planted in the car, police said.
A surveillance video shows the moment of explosion. (Youtube)
Two people, a woman and a child of approximately 10 years, who were in the car too, were taken away in an ambulance. The woman received heavy injuries.
At least one more car, a Honda CRV, was damaged by the explosion.
Timayev has had a controversial past. He was detained in Kyiv for illegal possession of weapons in February. He struck a deal with investigators and got a suspended sentence. When detained, Timayev carried an ID saying he was a member of the Battalion of Sheikh Mansur, an unofficial group that is reportedly participating in the fighting in the eastern Ukraine on the government side.
A Facebook video shows the scene minutes after the explosion. (Facebook)
Timayev also reportedly participated in the Russian-Chechen wars.
Artem Shevchenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, described Timayev as “well-known in criminal circles” and “not an example of a law-abiding citizen.”
Timerhan Minayev, who said he served with Timayev in a volunteer battalion, told Channel 112 that Timayev already survived several murder attempts earlier in his life.
“He was a personal enemy of Ramzan Kadyrov,” said Minayev, referring to the pro-Kremlin president of Chechnya.
Kadyrov was blamed for several high-profile murders but always denied such accusations. Kadyrov’s associates have been convicted of killing Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Kadyrov’s political opponents Sulim Yamadayev and Umar Israilov. Austrian police believe Israilov’s murder was ordered by Kadyrov, which he denies.
Also, the murder of Timayev comes three months after an assassination attempt of the two high-profile members of the Chechen Battalion of Dzhokhar Dudayev, Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev. Okuyeva and Osmayev were shot at by a man pretending to be a journalist on June 1 in Kyiv. Both survived the attempt.
Nataliya Shved witnessed the explosion of Timayev’s car. The woman was walking the street when the Toyota exploded some 50 meters away.
“The blast was directed at the car as it was at the intersection,” she told the Kyiv Post. “Other drivers reacted immediately and broke the roof of the car to rescue the woman. Obviously, some of the passengers were most likely killed because pieces of flesh were right there on the street where I walk to work every day.”
Shved said she felt small shatters of glass on her head but wasn’t injured.
