2023-10-28 01:09:41
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is not good to be an oligarch or a pro-Russian Ukrainian. Oleg Tsariov, a former Ukrainian MP who defected to the Russian side in 2014, was seriously injured by bullets during the night from Thursday to Friday in Crimea. Russian authorities have announced the opening of an investigation into “attempted assassination”.
“On the night of October 27, 2023, an assassination attempt was made against Russian public and political figure Oleg Anatolievich Tsariov in Yalta”, in annexed Ukrainian Crimea, the Russian security services (FSB) said.
According to an account of the facts published on the channel Telegram of Oleg Tsariov, “around midnight”, the latter received “two bullets”. “When the ambulance arrived, (he) was unconscious and had lost a lot of blood,” it is written.
Earlier on Friday, Vladimir Rogov, an official with the Russian occupation in southern Ukraine, said Oleg Tsariov, 53, was in “very serious condition.” “He is currently in intensive care,” he also said on Telegram.
The FSB has opened criminal proceedings for “attempted assassination of a public figure,” the security body added in a statement, cited by the TASS news agency.
The Russian Investigative Committee, in charge of the main investigations, called for “measures to establish all the circumstances of the incident”.
Opposed to the Maidan movement
Born in Dnipropetrovsk in 1970, Oleg Tsariov was a deputy in the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, from 2002 to 2014, notably under the label of the Party of Regions, one of the main promoters at the time of the pro-Russian movement in Ukraine.
He strongly opposed the pro-European Maidan movement at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, describing the demonstrators as “neo-Nazis”.
In spring 2014, he was deprived of his parliamentary immunity and sanctioned by the European Union for having notably become a member of the self-proclaimed “Parliament” of the pro-Russian separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk (east).
On the day of the Russian assault on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Oleg Tsariov wrote on his Telegram channel: “kyiv will be freed from the fascists”.
Several assassinations or attempted assassinations attributed by the Russian authorities to Ukraine and targeting those responsible for the Russian occupation have taken place since the start of the conflict in 2022.
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