The National Police has reported identifying and neutralizing those responsible for the high-profile murder of a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer committed on July 10 in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district.
That day, 50-year-old SBU officer Ivan Voronych left his house and was heading to his car when an unknown assailant approached and fired several point-blank shots. He died on the spot from his wounds.
Through the joint work of Kyiv police, the SBU, investigators, and criminal analysis experts, those involved in the crime were identified. The perpetrators turned out to be a man and a woman, citizens of another country.
According to investigators, the suspects were acting on orders from a hostile intelligence service. They had obtained information about the location of a weapons cache, which they used to carry out the brazen killing. After the murder, they attempted to hide.
Law enforcement located them through coordinated efforts. During the arrest, the suspects offered armed resistance and were neutralized.
Kyiv police’s investigative department had been investigating the case under Article 348 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code — attempt on the life of a law enforcement officer. Further investigative and procedural actions are ongoing.
Former MP and now Azov officer Yurii Mykhalchyshyn noted that Ivan Voronych had served for many years in the National Statehood Protection Department of the SBU in Lviv Oblast and moved to counterintelligence after the start of the Anti-Terrorist Operation in 2014.
Mykhalchyshyn described Voronych as a “modest, patriotic, and professional officer” who had even interrogated him in 2011 in a case over “calls to overthrow the constitutional order” during Yanukovych’s presidency.
He also noted that after the Maidan, Voronych was among the first to deploy to the ATO zone, participated in capturing the “Yamal” sabotage group, and fought Russian occupiers from 2014 onward.
Reports said Voronych was one of those who helped establish an SBU unit that is “now causing many problems for the Russians.”