Pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsaryov shot and wounded

Former Ukrainian legislator Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russian figure whom sources said Moscow had lined up to lead a puppet administration in Kyiv after Russia’s invasion, was shot and wounded in a late-night attack, his family said on Friday.

“Around midnight he was shot twice on the premises of the sanatorium where he lives,” it said. “When the ambulance arrived, Oleg was unconscious and had lost a lot of blood.”

A Russian-installed official in southern Ukraine, Vladimir Rogov, said that Tsaryov was being treated in intensive care.

Russian media said the attack took place in Yalta in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It was not clear who was behind it, and whether the motive was criminal or political.

Three sources familiar with Russia’s post-invasion plans said in 2022 that Russia had been lining up Tsaryov to head a puppet government in Kyiv if it had succeeded in ousting President Volodymyr Zelensky in the first days of the war in February 2022. Tsaryov said Reuters’ account had “very little to do with reality”.

Tsaryov runs hotels in Crimea. He was previously a member of the Ukrainian parliament and then speaker of the parliament of “Novorossiya”, an entity formed after Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine broke away in 2014 and began fighting Ukrainian forces.

Tsaryov has been placed under sanctions by Ukraine, the US and a number of other Western countries.

He is listed as a “traitor to the motherland” by Myrotvorets (“Peacemaker”), a vast unofficial Ukrainian database of people considered to be enemies of the country. Its website lists personal information on him including an email address, a passport number and an address in Yalta.

No comment was immediately available from Ukrainian intelligence.

Several pro-war Russian figures in the Myrotvorets database have been assassinated since the start of the conflict, including journalist Darya Dugina, war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and former submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitsky.

Dugina and Tatarsky were blown up by bombs, while Rzhitsky was shot dead while out on an early morning run. 

Reuters