Prosecutors: Nikopol deputy mayor killed by unknown perpetrators

A deputy mayor of Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast was shot to death in his car on Feb. 8 by unknown perpetrators, the Prosecutor General's Office reported.

Even though Nikopol regularly suffers from Russian attacks, often inflicting civilian casualties, the prosecutors did not link the killing to Russian forces.

According to the investigation, unknown people opened fire against the deputy mayor's car in the street, killing the man on the spot. The attack also set the vehicle on fire, which was later extinguished by first responders, the police said.

The Prosecutor General's Office began investigating the case as murder.

"Currently, urgent investigation is underway to identify the persons involved in the crime," the prosecutors said.

According to the police, the incident was reported at 9 a.m. local time. The police report spoke only of one unnamed perpetrator.

The Ukrainian outlet New Voice said that the victim was Vitalii Zhuravlov, a member of Yuliia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, who became Nikopol's deputy mayor in September 2021.

Nikopol, a city of around 100,000 people, lies at the mostly dried-up Kakhovka reservoir, just across from Russian troops occupying the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and the city of Enerhodar.

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The Kyiv IndependentDaria Shulzhenko