Can shooting an anti-tank rocket launcher in the center of Kyiv be described as an act of hooliganism? According to city police, it can.
On the night to April 13, the office of leading property developer Kyivmiskbud in Kyiv’s central Pechersk district was hit by an anti-tank grenade. The attackers targeted the sales department of the company. No casualties were reported.
Bohdan Kutiepov, a journalist for the Hromadske news website, was working in his office on the 13th floor in the same building when the blast happened at 2 a.m. in the morning. The grenade also damaged the wall of Georgian restaurant Khmeli-Suneli next to Kyivmiskbud’s office.
“The explosion was so strong that the windows in our office shook. The alarms of cars parked nearby went off,” Kutiepov told the Kyiv Post. “When I went downstairs, there were already four police cars there – the Pechersk police station is some 200 meters away.”
The attackers appear to have used an RPG-18 grenade launcher, but a spokesperson for the National Police said the type of the weapon is yet to be confirmed by investigators. She also said that the incident had been classed as a case of hooliganism.
The incident occurred not far from government quarter and a number of city landmarks.
Kyivmiskbud said the incident had been an attack by a rival.
“Our company is the leader on the construction market of Ukraine. The incident is directly related to attempts to destabilize its work,” the company said in a statement.
Kyivmiskbud’s office has been attacked before. In September 2016, activists of the nationalist organization Azov Battalion blocked its central office in protest at the construction of a high-rise residential building in the Svyatoshin district of Kyiv.
