Andriy Parubiy, a key Euromaidan revolution figure and former Rada speaker, has been assassinated in Lviv on August 30, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Parubiy, aged 54, was shot and killed in the southern Frankivskyi district of the western Ukrainian city. According to local police, an emergency call was received around noon and the victim died at the scene. The attacker was reportedly riding an electric bicycle.

Earlier in the day, Ukraine’s National Police confirmed that a political figure had been murdered in Lviv. Lawmaker Iryna Herashchenko, from the European Solidarity party, later confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that the victim was Parubiy.

"Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko and Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko have just informed me about the first known circumstances of the terrible murder in Lviv. Andrii Parubii has died," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said as cited by The Kyiv Independent. "All necessary means have been deployed in the investigation and search for the killer."

Authorities have not released information on any potential suspects or the possible motive behind the killing.

Parubiy had been a high-profile political figure in Ukraine for more than two decades. He participated in the 2004 Orange Revolution and later played a central role in organising self-defence units during the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, which led to the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Following Yanukovych’s removal, Parubiy was appointed secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, a role he held from February to August 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

From 2014 to 2016, he served as the first deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, before becoming speaker from 2016 to 2019. Since 2019, he had been a member of the European Solidarity party led by former president Petro Poroshenko.

Political assassinations

Political assassinations have been a regular feature of Ukrainian life in the last years. Ukraine has witnessed a number of high-profile killings and suspicious deaths involving political and public figures as well as prominent journalists, many of them tied to the country’s ongoing war with Russia and the internal upheavals it has triggered.

Amongst the most prominent was the 2015 assassination of journalist and political commentator Oleh Buzyna in Kyiv. A vocal supporter of pro-Russian views, Buzyna was shot dead near his home and remains highly controversial.

More recently, Denys Kireyev, a former banker turned intelligence operative, was shot dead in March 2022 shortly after participating in the initial round of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in Belarus. He was reportedly shot dead by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) on March 5, 2022, who accused him of treason, but the Ministry of Defence later claimed he was working for Ukrainian military intelligence and died in the line of duty. The circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear, but it has been claimed he was poisoned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

In August 2022, Oleksiy Kovalyov, a former member of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, was assassinated in his home in Hola Prystan. Kovalyov had defected to a Russian-installed administration in the occupied Kherson region. Ukrainian intelligence was widely suspected to have played a role, although Kyiv did not officially confirm responsibility. His killing was widely seen as part of an informal campaign targeting collaborators in occupied territories.

Other local officials in areas temporarily occupied by Russian forces—such as in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts—have also been killed or have disappeared under suspicious circumstances. In these cases, Moscow often accused Ukrainian partisans or special operations forces of involvement. Ukrainian authorities typically neither confirm nor deny such operations.

Several additional incidents—including car bombings and unexplained deaths of military-linked individuals—have occurred during wartime, further complicating efforts to distinguish political assassinations from acts of war or internal security operations.

The killing of Andriy Parubiy marks a rare instance of a daylight and very public  assassination of a high-profile figure in government-held Ukraine.