Earlier today the Ukraine Member of Parliament Andriy Parubiy was shot dead in Lviv (aka Lvov, Lemberg).
Parubiy was walking down a road near his home when a man with a motorcycle helmet and a delivery bag came up behind him. The man lifted a pistol and shot Parubiy seven or eight times before walking away.
Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta – 11:13 UTC · Aug 30, 2025
Video of today's murder of MP Andriy Parubiy in Lviv. This is my neighborhood. Close to my home. The killer posed as a Glovo courier.
A manhunt has been launched to capture him.
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About a year ago another prominent rightwing person, Iryna Farion, was also killed in Lviv.
Parubiy was the organizer and commander of the fascist militia during the Maidan coup in February 2014. During those days several snipers from Georgia, stationed at the Hotel Ukraina which was under opposition control, fired and killed policemen as well as protesters.
Video from those days showed Parubiy supervising the situation as the snipers, with their weapon cases, were leaving the hotel.
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Following the Maidan coup Parubiy's involvement in violence continued:
DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics – 11:02 UTC · Aug 30, 2025
Parubiy played a central role in the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, when dozens of ethnic Russians were killed after being trapped in the Trade Unions House and the building was set ablaze. According to former SBU officer Vasily Prozorov, Parubiy organized the delivery of armed nationalist militants to Odessa that day and oversaw their coordination.
At least 48 people were killed in the building, those who attempted to escape were shot, Many jumped from window to their deaths, others who survived their escape were attacked at the perimeter by police and civilians.
Strana sums up Parubiy's career (machine translation):
Andrey Parubiy has been in politics since he was 17 years old. From the very beginning, he adhered to a radical nationalist line. Back in 1988, he founded the organization "Spadschyna" in Lviv, which was engaged in restoring the graves of UPA members and guarded the first anti-Soviet rallies in western Ukraine.
In 1990, he became a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council.
In 1991, together with Oleg Tyagnibok, he founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), which was later renamed Svoboda.
He took part in the first Maidan in 2004, was the commandant of the Ukrainian House. Then he joined Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party.
In the spring of 2010, a criminal case was opened against Parubiy for trying to disrupt the vote in the Rada for ratifying the agreement with Russia on extending the stay of the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea – he threw eggs at Speaker Litvin, and then lit a smoke bomb in the session hall.
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Parubiy gained national fame during the second Maidan, where he was one of the main leaders and coordinated Self-defense.After the victory of the Maidan in late February 2014, he was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
In Russia, Parubiy was accused of being the organizer of the May 2 events in Odessa, during which dozens of people were killed. Parubiy himself denied this.
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After the early elections in 2014, which Parubiy went on the list of the "Popular Front", he first became the first deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, and after Speaker Groysman went to the prime Minister became the speaker.In the parliamentary elections in 2019, he went on the list of the Eurosolidarnost party of Petro Poroshenko.
Participated in actions in support of Poroshenko after criminal cases were initiated against the ex-president.
After the start of a full-scale war, a photo and video of Parubiy in a military uniform with machine guns appeared at one of the checkpoints in the Kiev region.
But in general, he was not very visible in the last three years and did not conduct active political activities.
Andrej Parubiy in his younger days
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Russia or Russia friendly Ukrainians will of course be the first who will be accused of murdering Andriy Parubiy. That however is certainly not the only possibility:
Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta – 12:01 UTC · Aug 30, 2025
Russian propagandists are calling the recently murdered Andriy Parubiy a “Nazi,” a “Russophobe,” and an “ultranationalist.”
At the same time, the neo-Nazi group White Phoenix expressed support for his killing, claiming that Parubiy was a “traitor and a desecrator of the Ukrainian nation and the white race.”
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There are additional potential motives (machine translation):
Strana spoke with several associates of Andriy Parubiy in the European Solidarity party, from which he was a deputy since 2019.
Their main version is "the hand of the Kremlin": revenge for active participation in the Maidan and for actions in 2014.
At the same time, some interlocutors do not exclude the domestic political background of the murder, recalling that "Andrei knew well how to organize Maidans." That is, hinting that the murder may be connected with the expectations of some future political upheaval in the country.
There are also suggestions that someone wanted to silence him:
The Russians could target him for sure, as his political allies allege. But he was a key witness of Maidan events and many of its undisclosed secrets will go into his grave.
Summarized:
Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin – 12:04 UTC · Aug 30, 2025
All fingers are being pointed at Russia in the wake of Andriy Paruby’s assassination and it’s fair enough – he was a sworn enemy of Russia, albeit not politically visible in recent years.
Russia was instantly accused in all previous post-Maidan political assassinations, such as those of Pavel Sheremet or Denis Voronenkov. However in all of these cases, far right militants with links to Ukraine’s security services would surface as suspects in police investigations.
Since 2014, Russia is only known to have assassinated senior Ukrainian intelligence officers which it deems responsible for painful clandestine attacks.
From any perspective, Ukrainian or Russian, it’s puzzling why a seemingly inactive veteran politician becomes a target. Revenge and the fact that he knew too much come to mind. But as Strana points out, Paruby knew better than most how to stage a revolution in Ukraine.
Parubiy's case officer at the CIA could likely add to this.