Boy, 3, killed during murder attempt on father in Kiev

THE three-year old son of a Ukrainian politician was shot dead in the capital Kiev in what police described as an assassination attempt on his father.

The toddler, identified as Oleksandr, was shot in the head and died on the way to hospital after an attacker shot at the SUV his father, Vyacheslav Sobolev, was driving on Sunday evening.

The killing echoes grisly assassinations in recent years that began in Kiev shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of hostilities in eastern Ukraine between government troops and Russian-backed separatists. In 2016, Pavel Sheremet, an investigative journalist, was killed by a car bomb, and in 2017, Denis Voronenkov, an exiled Russian politician, was shot dead on a street by a hired killer.

Andriy Kryshchenko, the chief of the Kiev police, told a news briefing that two suspects, aged 18 and 19, have been detained and were being questioned. He did not specify their roles in the murder but said that the assassin was waiting for Mr Sobolev’s car in a nearby building and opened fire when it pulled up at traffic lights.

Police officials would not speculate on the killer’s motives but said that they were looking into a possible business or family dispute. They also refused to comment on reports that the two suspects had served in Ukrainian volunteer battalions that fought Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Sobolev, a 47-year-old member of the Kiev city council, is mostly known for his business deals in eastern Ukraine, which is now partly under the control of Russian-backed separatists. He co-founded a supermarket chain in the capital, Donetsk, in 1997, and owns a popular restaurant in Kiev.

Oleksandr was Mr Sobolev’s fifth and youngest child.