Kryvyi Rih Mayor Kostiantyn Pavlov was found dead in a pool of blood, with a gunshot wound, on the afternoon of Aug. 15, the National Police reported.
According to the police, Pavlov was discovered lying on his terrace in the village of Vilne near Kryvyi Rih, a city of 635,000 people located 350 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. The local First City TV Channel wrote that a shotgun was found next to his body.
Police have opened a murder investigation.
The 48-year-old mayor was a member of the Opposition Platform-For Life, a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
“He was killed,” Vadim Rabinovich, the co-head of the OPFL, wrote on Facebook.
Pavlov became mayor after winning the local elections in December 2020. He formerly worked as an electrician and served a deputy mayor of the city from 2006 to 2012. He was previously a member of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. This party fell apart because of the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014 that forced Yanukovych to abdicate and flee the country.
In the first round of the 2020 elections, Pavlov came in third, with less than 10% of the votes. However, Oleksandr Vilkul, who served as the city’s mayor from 2010 to 2020, then withdrew for health reasons.
In the second round, Pavlov received 56.97% of the votes, defeating his opponent, Dmitry Shevchik, representing President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
