In late August, Andriy Parubiy was walking down a street in Lviv, western Ukraine, when a man disguised as a delivery driver followed him and suddenly opened fire. The former Ukrainian parliamentary leader was killed in broad daylight with several shots fired.
A surveillance camera captured the crime, sending shockwaves throughout the country. A debate is now underway in Ukraine about how politicians, activists, and celebrities have become targets in Russia’s hybrid warfare. According to experts, such acts serve the Kremlin’s strategic goal of destabilizing and demoralizing Ukrainian society.
During the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Parubiy was one of the leaders of the pro-European protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who later fled to Russia.
Following the change in leadership, Parubiy became head of national security during Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the start of fighting in eastern Ukraine, and in 2016 he became the speaker of parliament. He remained in that office until 2019. Subsequently, he became a member of the Committee on Security, Defense and Intelligence. With the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, he joined the territorial defense forces.
Suspected perpetrator confesses
Two days after the assassination, the suspect, Mykhailo S., was arrested. According to the police, the crime was carefully planned, it was “no coincidence,” and there was also a “Russian connection.” Citing sources in the authorities, media outlets reported that Russian intelligence services had manipulated the 52-year-old: They had supposedly promised the alleged perpetrator information about his son, who was killed in the war while serving as a Ukrainian soldier.
Mykhailo S. pleaded guilty in a court in Lviv. He denied being blackmailed by the Russian secret service and said he hoped to be sentenced quickly. “I want to be exchanged for prisoners of war so that I can find my son’s body,” he said.
During his speech at Parubiy’s memorial service, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko expressed his outrage at the attack.”I was shocked at how low the Russian occupiers had sunk, blackmailing a father with the return of his son’s body in order to get him to kill someone from [Ukraine’s pro-European uprising],” he said, adding that “all the leaders of the Maidan [uprising], as well Andriy Parubiy as its symbol, are branded as enemies by Russia.”
Russia’s special operation?
“The Russian secret services have intensified their intelligence operations. This is how they compensate for their mistakes on the front line,” said Oleksandr Kovalenko, an expert at the Dmytro Tymchuk Center for Security Studies, a Ukrainian think tank.
In the light of statements made by Mykhailo S., who claimed that the assassination was “his revenge on the Ukrainian government,” the expert pointed to an overarching plan to discredit Ukraine. “Analyses show that they are now trying to spread the narrative in the Ukrainian media landscape that it is not Russia but the Ukrainian government that is to blame for the war.”
“They exploited a broken person who could be easily manipulated by psychologists to commit this murder and then express the narrative that Russia needs,” Kovalenko told DW. Russia’s secret services are increasingly using Ukrainians to pursue their goals in hybrid warfare — for arson and bomb attacks, as well as assassinations, he added.
Were the Ukrainian intelligence services at fault?
“This terrible story raises many questions about the Ukrainian secret services, and the authorities. All of us must quickly correct these mistakes. Recruitment and instruction took place via the Russian messaging app Telegram,” said Iryna Herashchenko of the opposition party European Solidarity on Facebook. She is calling for an end to anonymity on the platform, so that all users can be identified.
She also demands that families of the deceased, missing, and imprisoned receive more psychological support: “They are left to their fate, which makes them easy prey for enemy secret services that recruit them.”
Former Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) employee Ivan Stupak confirmed that Russia selects teenagers, people in financial distress, people with drug addictions, or relatives of missing or detained persons for its operations in Ukraine, because they are easier to manipulate.
“Our services have a lot of information about Russia’s attempts to bribe or blackmail people into carrying out attacks on military vehicles, army recruitment offices, police stations, regional SBU offices, or public places in order to cause as much bloodshed as possible,” Stupak told DW. He added that the SBU lacks the personnel to take effective countermeasures, because many are deployed on the front lines.
A chain of murders and threats
Parubiy’s murder is just one in a series of high-profile killings of Ukrainian politicians and activists since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Gyunduz Mamedov, who was deputy prosecutor general from 2019 to 2022, analyzed previous assassinations of well-known figures for the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
He lists the murders of politician Iryna Farion, who was shot dead outside her home in July 2024, and activist Demyan Hanul from Odesa in March 2025, as well as a series of attacks on activist Serhii Sternenko and two attempts on the life of journalist Dmytro Gordon that were foiled by the Ukrainian secret service. Mamedov does not rule out the possibility that all these cases are connected.
“Together, they form a chain that reveals the systematic nature of Russian strategy, which may be state-directed,” Mamedov wrote.
Russia is deliberately carrying out “decapitation attacks” not only against the Ukrainian military, but also against politicians and civil society activists, considered by the Kremlin to symbolize the enemy, he said. “Russia wants to create chaos, paralyze political life, and deprive Ukraine of those who can move society forward.”
Do Ukrainian politicians need private security?
The killing of Andriy Parubiy has sparked a debate about whether personal protection in Ukraine is adequate. The authority responsible for state security stated that, according to the law, it only protects a few active top politicians and ministers. This security extends to all family members who live with them or accompany them. “After the end of their term of office, they receive state protection for another year,” the authority wrote on social media.
Kovalenko stressed that the Ukrainian state is strapped for resources and suggested that public figures should take care of their own security. “It is impossible to protect all well-known Ukrainians, just as it is impossible to check whether all those who are patriotic and active are being watched by enemy secret services or their agents,” he said.
Politicians, public figures, and activists are advised to be aware who is in their proximity and watch out for unfamiliar cars near their homes, experts recommend. If they have any suspicions, they should contact the police. Amid the current risks, many say it makes sense to hire a private security service, which is legal in Ukraine.
This article was originally published in Ukrainian.
