Deaths Of Ukrainian Intelligence Officers In Car Bombings: Internal Criminal Standoff Or Revenge?

Source: pravda.com.ua

A series of car bombings has hit officers of Ukrainian intelligence services this week.

On June 27, Col. Maxim Shapoval of the Chief Directorate of Ukrainian military intelligence was killed in Kiev. His car was blown up. Some Ukrainian media reported that Shapoval was chief of military intelligence’s special forces.
On June 28, a car with servicemen of the Security Service of Ukraine was hit by an IED in the Kiev controlled part of the Donetsk region. SBU Col. Yuriy Vozny was killed, three other servicemen were injured.

The deaths of Ukrainian intelligence officers caused significant jitters in the Ukrainian media and among experts following the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

According to experts there are two main versions of the events:

The recent deaths is a part of the ongoing internal standoff in the Ukrainian intelligence services. Few factions are combating for the control over the money flows and criminal businesses as well as for the political influence in the country.
The SBU and the Military Intelligence are deeploy involved in arms and drugs trafficing, and kidnaping of people in the conflict zone and in the nearby areas. There is a chance that Col. Maxim Shapoval and Col. Yuriy Vozny became victims of the ongoing attempt to re-define the spheres of influence in the area.

However, some experts believe that the June 27 and June 28 cases could be act of revenge. The Ukrainian intelligence and security services have repeatedly claimed that they were responsible for assasinations of prominent military commanders of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Arsen ‘Motorola’ Pavlov, commander of the Sparta Battalion of the DPR was killed on October 16, 2016. Mikhail ‘Givi’ Tolstykh, commander of the Somalia Battalion of the DPR was assasinated on February 8, 2017. Ukrainain media have widely dissiminated reports that this was made by pro-Kiev forces.

The recent events may be a reaction of the DPR and the LPR to actions of the Ukrainian special services aimed at assasinating leadrs of the people’s republics.

In this case, the main question that the Kiev regime has is will acts of revenge be asymmetric or symmetric? In other cases, may Ukrainian political leaders responsible for war crimes in eastern Ukraine become targets or not?

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