The person who threw an explosive device during Ukraine’s Independence Day celebration on Aug. 24 was targeting a passing truck with Ukrainian soldiers, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told journalists late on Aug. 25.
Lutsenko said the device “bounced off the truck’s side and when exploding it wounded the civilians,” according to Gordon.UA website.
He added that the investigators have already identified the suspects.
Three people were wounded as a result of the explosion and two of them were sent to a hospital.
They include the wife, the mother-in-law and a friend of a sniper company commander Valeriy Chybineyev, who was decorated as a Hero of Ukraine for his fights near Krasny Lyman and Donetsk airport in 2014-2015.
Chybineyev believes his relatives were wounded by accident.
The explosion happened several hours after thousands of soldiers, including 231 foreign soldiers, paraded in Kyiv on the occasion of 26th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.
The SBU state security service initially qualified the explosion as “hooliganism.”
But the police opened a criminal probe on “attempted murder committed using a method that poses danger to the lives of many people.”
Lutsenko believes the case might be requalified on Aug. 28 after the investigators finish examination of the explosive device, which was used.
“Anyway, this shows once again that the security measures are necessary for the capital of the country, which is at war,” Lutsenko said.
The Russian-instigated war in eastern Ukraine, which started in spring 2014, has claimed more than 10,000 military and civilian lives.
