Two Ukrainian policemen gave a ride to contract killers who came from the Balkans to Ukraine to kill a Montenegrin drug lord in central Kyiv in early May 2020, according to an investigation by the Slidstvo.Info media outlet.
The cops were asked to help the killers by a former Ukrainian lawmaker.
On May 26, 2020, the drug lord, Radoje Zvicer, his wife, kids, and their dog, went on a walk near their residential complex in Kyiv. The killers popped out of the car and started shooting at Zvicer. His wife Tamara shot back. Zvicer was hit five times and taken to the hospital in critical condition but survived. He disappeared shortly after recovering.
The assassination attempt on the streets of Kyiv was the result of a long war between two drug clans, the Kavač and the Škaljari, which once operated as a single cartel. Members of the latter allegedly ordered the murder of Zvicer, their rival and member of Kavač, who fled to Kyiv from the Balkans in 2019.
The mastermind behind the assassination attempt is alleged to be Milan Ljepoja, a Serb with a criminal background and a member of “Pink Panthers,” a notorious gang of diamond thieves, Slidstvo.info together with the Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (KRIK), a Serbian media outlet, found out.
Serbian police told the journalists that Ljepoja had been killed and his remains were dissolved in acid. But the man Ljepoja attempted to assassinate before his death, Zvicer, stayed alive.
The contract killers, two Serbian nationals and one Montenegrin illegally crossed the border into Ukraine in May 2020.
They were met by a car, which brought them to a spot where another car picked them up. Two Ukrainian policemen, Rostyslav Chernobroviy and Semen Hordienko, were inside the vehicle. Both transfers were organized by Yevhen Deidei, a former lawmaker and current aide to the chief of the Kyiv police, according to the journalists.
Deidei acknowledged to law enforcement that he had asked the two policemen to help “a group of foreigners,” but did not know the purpose of their visit, the journalists reported.
Slidstvo.Info also found out that the car the cops had used, a Toyota Sequoia, was linked to Deidei through a friend to whom it was registered. The car was sold after the incident.
Ukrainian police have arrested the men who tried to kill Zvicer. They have been charged with attempted murder. The court proceedings are ongoing.
Zvicer, his wife, the two policemen who drove the killers to Kyiv, and the ex-lawmaker who asked them to do so are witnesses in the case.
