Ukrainian colonel gunned down in Kyiv commanded secret intelligence unit that orchestrated assassinations of pro-Russian militants

Colonel Ivan Voronych, who was shot dead in Kyiv on July 10, served in Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency and had been with the agency for decades, according to The New York Times. Voronych had for a time commanded the special operations unit known as the Fifth Directorate, which receives technical support from the CIA and oversees, among other things, assassination missions, such as the 2016 killing of Arsen Pavlov, better known by his nom de guerre “Motorola,” a prominent commander of pro-Russian formations in eastern Ukraine.

Ivan Stupak, another former Ukrainian intelligence operative, corroborated these details in remarks to Ukrainian media outlet NV. “We remember Givi, Motorola, various other low-ranking ‘Russian Spring activists’; many were burned, shot, killed. These are the kinds of things this unit dealt with, the unit where the deceased [Voronych] worked,” Stupak said.

Ivan Voronych was killed on the morning of July 10 in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district. The gunman shot him several times with a pistol before fleeing the scene.