A man's body was found by the side of a road in the city of Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, on March 28, the National Police reported.
Multiple Ukrainian media outlets reported, citing law enforcement sources, that the deceased was Oleksandr Plakhotnik, a member of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party and a former deputy mayor of Kamianske.
According to the police, the man had a gunshot wound to the head.
"We believe that this is a contract killing, we are all shocked," Volodymyr Fedorov, head of the information and analysis department of Batkivshchyna's regional branch, told Suspilne.
The police launched an investigation into the incident under the article on premeditated murder.
Plakhotnik, 49, ran for the Verkhovna Rada on the Batkivshchyna party ticket in 2014 and 2019 but was not elected to parliament. He was elected to the Kamianske City Council in 2015 and served until 2020.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
(Updated: )
