Investigators examine whether Ukraine terrorist attack was directed by Russia

The gunman, 58, opened fire on passersby before barricading himself in a supermarket and taking hostages. Detectives sealed off the area in the Holosiivskyi district and tried to negotiate with him. He refused and was killed after a 40-minute standoff.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said police and the security services were trying to establish a motive for the “tragic” attack. About 14 people were injured, including a 12-year-old boy, he said.

“He took hostages and unfortunately, killed one of them,” Zelenskyy added. “He shot dead four more people right on the street, and one woman passed away in hospital after being seriously wounded. My condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims.”

Local media named the perpetrator as Dmytro Vasylchenkov, a Ukrainian citizen who was born in Moscow. He had previously lived in the Russian city of Ryazan and was a longtime resident of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. He had a criminal record, Zelenskyy said.

According to a leaked Russian database, Vasylchenkov had multiple Russian bank accounts until at least 2021 and a Russian phone number. He travelled several times to Russia in 2016.

Reports said he posted anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic content on social media and denied Ukraine’s right to exist as a country. He also fantasised about “cleansing” society using Hitler’s methods and regretted that Russia’s capture of Bakhmut in 2023 did not happen sooner.

It is unclear what, if any, contact he may have had with Russia. Kremlin operatives have recruited more than 800 Ukrainians over the past two years, many of them teenagers, to carry out attacks on critical infrastructure and draft offices. The goal, officials say, is to spread uncertainty, fear and distrust.

Shootings of this nature are extremely rare in Ukraine. Tymofii Solovei, a paramedic at the scene, said: “Either he is insane or this is a Russian terrorist attack. We don’t know how long he was preparing this. He may have been communicating with someone from Russia.”

Before setting off on his killing spree, Vasylchenkov set fire to his fifth-floor home. Thick smoke billowed from the apartment’s window. He then emerged on to the street, shooting people at random, and headed towards a busy boulevard and shopping mall.

By Saturday evening police had sealed off the area. Two bodies lay next to the entrance of the gunman’s building, wrapped in silver foil. Toys lay abandoned in a nearby playground. Video showed the gunman executing one person, then jogging calmly down a road.

Tymofii Sergiichuk, a student, said: “This shocked me. We have pretty good security in Kyiv and there’s been nothing like this since the beginning of the war.” He added: “Right now people are already uneasy. This has scared them more.”

Speaking outside the Velmart supermarket, Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said the suspect was the legal owner of a semi-automatic weapon. He shot “chaotically” at everybody he encountered, firing single rounds from his carbine. Officers tried without success to negotiate with him.

The minister added: “We tried to persuade him. Realising that there was likely an injured person inside, we offered to bring in tourniquets to stop the bleeding and so on. But he didn’t respond. That’s why the order was given to eliminate him. Especially after he killed one of the hostages.”

Klymenko declined to give a reason for the attack. “Investigators are currently working on it,” he said. “They are establishing the facts.”

Ruslan Kravchenko, the prosecutor general, said the incident was being treated as a terrorist offence. He posted a photo showing a blurred prone figure covered in blood inside a store and a weapon lying nearby.

Additional reporting Pjotr Sauer