Ukrainian former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, and a search was under way for the killer.
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The Prosecutor General’s office said a gunman had fired several shots at Parubiy, killing him on the spot. The attacker fled and a manhunt was launched, it said.
Parubiy, 54, was a member of parliament, had been parliamentary speaker from April 2016 to August 2019, and was one of the leaders of protests in 2013-14 calling for closer ties with the European Union.
He was also secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council from February to August 2014, a period when fighting began in eastern Ukraine and Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula.
Officials gave no immediate indication whether the murder had any direct link to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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“Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko have just reported on the first known circumstances of a horrific murder in Lviv. Andriy Parubiy has been killed,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a social media post.
He sent his condolences to Parubiy’s family and loved ones, and added: “All necessary forces and means are engaged in the investigation and search for the killer.”