June 2, 2017
An assassination
attempt on a Chechen man whom Russian authorities accuse of plotting to kill
President Vladimir Putin failed in Kyiv on June 1 after the victim’s wife
returned gunfire and wounded the would-be assassin.
Adam Osmayev
sustained two gunshot wounds to the chest before his wife, Amina Okuyeva, fired
back at the alleged shooter, hitting him in the arm, leg, and hip, Kyiv police
said.
A spokesman for
the Ukrainian Interior Ministry identified the alleged shooter as Russian
national Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakaev, and said authorities were looking into
how he obtained a Ukrainian passport.
Both of the men
are said to be in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
In an incident
that resembled a spate of gangland-style killings in the 1990s, a man who had
posed as Alex Werner, a journalist from the French newspaper Le Monde, arranged
to meet Osmayev, a former student at the prestigious Wycliffe College boarding
school in Gloucestershire, England.
The suspect and
Osmayev, along with Okuyeva, met in a car ostensibly to drive to the French
Embassy in the Ukrainian capital to conduct the interview when the assailant
pulled out a gun and shot Osmayev, who like his wife was born in Russia's
southern republic of Chechnya.
In a video
interview after the incident, Okuyeva said the man had told
them his editors had sent a "gift" for them that they would
"like very much" and presented a box.
"When he
opened it, I spotted a Glock pistol," said Okuyeva, who like her husband
spent time among pro-Kyiv forces fighting Russia-backed separatists after war
broke out in Ukraine's east. "He immediately grabbed it and started
shooting at Adam."
But Okuyeva said
afterward that she always carries a gun that she was awarded by the Ukrainian
authorities for her service "on my belt along with a spare magazine."
She said the
gunman "fired a few shots before I fired back at him," adding that
her gun jammed after she fired her third shot. Okuyeva said she "pounced
on him with my bare hands and he dropped his gun" before she and her
husband pushed him out of the car. She then began to treat her husband's
wounds, she said.
In a post on Facebook,
Okuyeva thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers.
“By the Grace of
the Almighty everything is all right. Adam’s condition is serious but stable,”
she added. She later said her husband was "conscious -- understands
everything, but could not yet speak because of the ventilator."
She also cited doctors
saying the suspected gunman had been struck by a bullet in
the spine, adding, "I'm glad that he got what he deserved from my
hand."
Photos
published by Ukraine’s RBC news agency showed the alleged
shooter and a Ukrainian passport naming him as Oleksandr Dakar.
Artem Shevchenko,
communications director for Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said in a Facebook
post that the passport in Dakar’s name suggested the suspect had repeatedly
crossed the border into Belarus and Russia.
"A Russian trail
of blood in this crime is as obvious as the blood stains on Amina’s clothing
from the [attacker]," Shevchenko
said, adding the incident was an "audacious and
insidious enemy attack on patriots of Ukraine."
Anton
Herashchenko, a lawmaker and adviser to Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen
Avakov, added that police were looking into all possible motives for the
assassination attempt but said it appeared to fit with a series of killings and
foiled plots between 2014 and 2017 in which authorities found a Russian trace.
But Pavlo
Danyukov, deputy chief of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) branch in Kyiv,
said on June 2 that there was no confirmed evidence of Russia's involvement in
the attack, according to Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by
RFE/RL and VOA.
Herashchenko said
the gun used by Okuyeva had been given to her by Avakov as a gift for her
service in the Kyiv-2 police battalion in eastern Ukraine, where she and
Osmayev fought against Russia-backed separatists.
Osmayev, who
speaks fluent English with a slight Russian accent, made headlines when he was
detained by Ukrainian authorities in Odesa in February 2012 and charged with
illegal explosives possession, damaging private property, and forgery. At the
request of Russian authorities, he was later charged with plotting to kill
Putin.
The European
Court of Human Rights recommended that Ukraine not extradite Osmayev to Russia,
after which Kyiv decided to suspend the extradition process. In September 2013,
a Russian court sentenced the second suspect in the case, Ilya Pyanzin, to 10
years in prison following his extradition by Ukraine to Russia.
Osmayev was
released from Ukrainian custody in November 2014, after more than 2 1/2 years
in jail in connection with the initial charges.
In February 2015,
Osmayev became a commander of the volunteer Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion fighting
Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine after the death of its previous
commander, Isa Munayev.
In an interview with
the Irish Times shortly afterward, Osmayev said he and other Chechens
had joined the pro-Kyiv side “to fight for the Chechen cause, which is also the
Ukrainian cause and the European cause.”
“If Ukraine is
strong and free it can change Russia, and bring freedom to Chechnya in some
years,” he added.
Christopher
Miller
