The investigation’s preliminary findings indicate that a Toyota Camry with Georgian license plates was blown up in central Kyiv on Friday evening by means of a planted explosive device, which killed Georgian citizen Timur Makhauri and severely injured his wife; the third passenger, a child, was not harmed, Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesperson Artem Shevchenko said.
“There were three people in the car, namely a man, who died, a woman who sustained serious injuries, with medical specialists struggling to save her life, and a child, who survived the incident and whose life is not in danger,” Shevchenko said at a news briefing on Friday evening.
A criminal case has been opened into the incident on charges of “premeditated murder committed using a publicly dangerous method,” he said.
“Preliminary findings indicate that an explosive device planted in the car went off. The victim is a citizen of another state, he is a citizen of Georgia, and his identity has been determined,” Shevchenko said. “This is an individual known quite well in the criminal world, and his name is Timur Makhauri. He is a citizen of Georgia, and he had firm connections with various Chechen circles,” he said.
Shevchenko said the woman who was in the car was preliminarily identified as Makhauri’s wife. He acknowledged, though, that certain inquiries taking some time have to be conducted to certainly establish the relations between the man killed in the blast, the injured woman and the child.
Shevchenko said the attack was targeted precisely against Makhauri.
Timur Makhauri, a member of a Ukrainian volunteer battalion who fought in eastern Ukraine, was killed in a car explosion near the Bessarabsky Market in central Kyiv on Friday, several people who knew Makhauri said in an interview shown earlier by the 112 Ukraine television channel from the scene of the incident.
In commenting further on this information, Shevchenko said the so-called Sheikh Mansur and Dzhokhar Dudayev battalions, with which Makhauri fought, have never had official status and were paramilitary units.
Makhauri, known also as Ali Dubayev and Ruslan Papaskeri, was detained on Basseina Street in central Kyiv in January 2017. Police then detained two armed men in a Mercedes ML, one of whom was Makhauri. A Glock and a Stechkin pistol loaded with live rounds were seized from the driver. The man also had documents indicating that he was a scout of an international volunteer peacekeeping battalion based in Donbas.
The commander of this battalion, Muslim Cheberloyevsky, confirmed to journalists that the man detained in Kyiv belonged to his battalion.
The Pechersky District Court of Kyiv ruled on February 28, 2017 to authorize a plea agreement with the prosecution, under which Makhauri was given five years of imprisonment suspended for three years, with the obligation to regularly report to probation institutions until the expiration of the probation period.
Media also reported that Makhauri had been arrested in Turkey on murder charges in the fall of 2012. However, following several judicial hearings, a court in Istanbul freed him three years later.
After leaving a Turkish prison, Makhauri moved to Ukraine, where he was subsequently detained for carrying weapons in January 2017.
