Lawyer for suspected Russian soldier killed
Print Edition
THE body of a Ukrainian lawyer representing one of two purported Russian soldiers on trial in Kiev was discovered yesterday buried in a farm with signs of a violent death.
Yuriy Grabovsky defended Russian sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov in a high-profile case that has strained ties between Moscow and Kiev.
Ukraine alleges that Aleksandrov and fellow special operations captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev were members of the Russian armed forces when they were captured in the pro-Moscow separatist region of Lugansk in May 2015.
Russia says both had been decommissioned before crossing into the war zone on their own free will.
Grabovsky was last seen in the government-controlled southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa on March 5.
He was soon reported missing and the local police launched a murder investigation on March 10.
Chief Ukrainian military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said yesterday that Grabovsky’s body was discovered in an abandoned farm about 125 kilometers south of Kiev.
Matios said the 43-year-old lawyer was “violently murdered, with an additional shot fired” to make his death certain.
The prosecutor said one of the two detained suspects had already confessed to the crime and helped locate the lawyer’s body.
“These are Ukrainian citizens, one of whom used a fake special service agent ID,” Matios said.
He added that the suspects “had received a lot of money” for carrying out the killing and “did everything to create their alibis.”
“Besides other scenarios, the investigation is studying the possibility of this being a specially planned operation,” Matios said.
Russia’s foreign ministry yesterday angrily blamed the attorney’s death on the “Russophobic hysteria” allegedly being fanned by Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership.
“Despite all our warning, the Kiev authorities either could not or did not want to ensure Yuriy Grabovsky safety,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Ukraine clearly does not intend to adhere to legal methods or accept that the anti-Russian and overtly Russophobic hysteria adopted by the authorities” is failing.
It was not immediately clear whether the attorney’s death would delay a trial that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Tuesday was “in its final stage”.
Poroshenko had proposed swapping the suspected soldiers for Nadiya Savchenko, a Kiev-born helicopter pilot who was sentenced on Tuesday in Russia to 22 years in prison.
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