Former public schoolboy injured in Kiev assassination attempt

A FORMER public school boy convicted of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Putin has been injured and his wife killed in an ambush shooting outside Kiev.

Adam Osmayev, 36, who was born in what is now Russia’s Chechnya republic and studied at Wycliffe College, was injured after his car was hit by gunfire at a railroad crossing in the Kiev region, according to Anton Geraschenko, MP and aide to Ukraine’s interior minister. He had fought for Kiev as a battalion commander in the conflict with Russiabacked separatists in eastern Ukraine. Mr Osmayev’s wife Amina Okueva was killed, however, Mr Geraschenko said.

“The best commemoration of her will be a just reprisal against all those who were involved in this horrible murder,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

The attack follows a scooter bombing that injured a nationalist MP and killed two others in Kiev last week.

Yesterday’s attack was the latest in at least nine high-profile assassination attempts in Ukraine in the past 15 months, including a June attempt on Mr Osmayev and Ms Okueva. Then, a Chechen man posing as a correspondent for French newspaper Le Monde opened a gift box to reveal a pistol. Mr Osmayev was shot while trying to grab the weapon, but Ms Okueva drew her own pistol and shot the assassin dead.

Mr Osmayev came to prominence when he was arrested in Ukraine in 2012, charged with plotting to blow up Mr Putin’s motorcade. The European Court of Human Rights prevented his extradition to Russia, but he was imprisoned for three years for illegal possession of explosives and forgery.

The son of an official, Mr Osmayev and his family had fled Chechnya after a falling out with Ramzan Kadyrov, who is now head of the republic.