Two police officers under suspicion of negligence for Kyiv mass shooting response
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Two police officers in Kyiv have been formally notified of suspicion over their actions during the mass shooting in the city on April 18, Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said.
The case concerns alleged official negligence that led to serious consequences, with investigators arguing the officers failed to act appropriately during the attack. If convicted, they face between two and five years in prison, and prosecutors are seeking their pre-trial detention.
The shooting occurred at a supermarket in Kyiv's Holosiivskyi district, where a gunman killed at least seven people and injured 14 others, including a 12-year-old boy, before being shot dead by police.
Kravchenko released body camera and nearby surveillance footage capturing the officers’ response after arriving at the scene.
The footage shows them encountering multiple victims, including a man, a woman, and a young boy. In the video, the boy can be heard pleading with officers to help his father instead of him.
Moments later, the gunman appears and opens fire again, at which point the officers retreat from the scene.
The video has drawn significant public attention and scrutiny over the officers’ conduct during a critical moment. Yevhen Zhukov, head of Ukraine's patrol police, resigned on April 19 amid the controversy.
The investigation is ongoing and will determine whether their actions violated protocol and contributed to the severity of the outcome during the mass shooting.
President Volodymyr Zelensky previously said that the motives of the the gunman, a 58-year-old native of Moscow who reportedly lived in Donetsk Oblast, are still under investigation.
The gunman served in the Arm Forces of Ukraine from 1992 until his retirement in 2005, Vyhivskyi said. The individual served mainly in the automotive troops in Odesa Oblast. He moved to Russia after retirement, returning to Ukraine in 2017 and residing in Bakhmut.
