Ukraine suspects Russia of assassinating former parliamentary speaker

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian officials said on Monday they suspected Russia of involvement in the murder of former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy after a suspect was detained.

National police head Ivan Vyhivskyi said the gunman had disguised himself as a courier and fired eight times in Saturday's attack in the western city of Lviv.

"He spent a long time preparing, watching, planning and finally pulling the trigger ... There is Russian involvement," he said on Facebook, without providing evidence.

Russia, which has been at war with Ukraine since early 2022, has not commented, and there has been no claim of responsibility for the killing of 54-year-old Parubiy, a leading figure in protests that helped to oust a pro-Russian president in 2014.

Vadym Onyshchenko, regional chief of the SBU intelligence service, said the murder looked like a contract killing.

"We have information indicating the possible involvement of the Russian Federation's security services in organising the murder," he said in a statement published by the SBU.

Parubiy was parliamentary speaker from 2016-2019 after helping to lead protests in 2013-14 that prompted the departure of Ukraine's then-president, the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich.

Parubiy was also secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council from February to August 2014, a period when Russia seized Crimea and Russian-backed separatists began fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine.

Both countries have accused each other of attempted or successful assassinations during their war, including those of a senior Russian general in Moscow and a Ukrainian intelligence colonel in Kyiv.

The suspect was detained overnight in the Khmelnytskyi region, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

"The crime was carefully planned: the victim’s movements were studied, a route was mapped, and an escape plan was thought through," he said on Telegram.

The suspect is a 52-year-old resident of Lviv, according to the Prosecutor General's Office.

Police published two photographs showing special forces officers holding a shirtless man in handcuffs.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Yuliia Dysa, writing by Max Hunder; Editing by Alex Richardson, Gareth Jones, Andrew Cawthorne and Kevin Liffey)