Kiev: A Ukrainian lawmaker was wounded and his bodyguard killed Wednesday in an apparent bombing attack that his party called an assassination attempt.
Kiev’s Espresso television said Radical Party member Igor Mosiychuk was walking out of its studio after conducting an interview when an explosive device went off near a scooter parked on the street.
The Ukrainian interior ministry said one person died on the way to the hospital while three others were injured.
The Radical Party said the man who perished was Mosiychuk’s bodyguard.
“The assassination attempt against Mosiychuk is linked to his professional activities and political views,” Radical Party leader Oleg Lyashko wrote on Facebook.
“Clearly, this is the work of our enemy’s secret services,” he said in an apparent reference to Russia.
The Ukrainian interior ministry did not say if it was treating the incident as an assassination attempt or explain what caused the blast.
The blast was the latest in a series of bombings to have hit the Ukrainian capital targeting politicians and a journalist.
Former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov – a Kremlin critic who had moved to Kiev – was gunned down in broad daylight in the Ukrainian capital in March.
A car bomb also killed journalist Pavlo Sheremet in July 2016. The independent Ukrainska Pravda news site’s reporter had denounced the political courses taken by both Russia and Ukraine in his work.
The two cases remain unsolved.
The Radical Party stands in nominal opposition to the government but has also been willing to work with it in the past.
Mosiychuk himself spent 2011-2014 in jail after being accused of involvement in an ultra-nationalist “terrorist” group.
The 45-year-old was released from prison after Ukraine’s February 2014 pro-EU revolt.
He was further involved in a 2015 bribery case that was eventually dropped.
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