KYIV, Ukraine (BN24) — Russia’s military said Saturday it has seized control of new settlements in eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials announced the killing of two alleged Russian agents accused of assassinating a senior Ukrainian intelligence officer in Kyiv.
In an update posted by Moscow’s defense ministry, Russian forces claimed they had advanced into several areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, though Ukraine’s military has not confirmed the extent of those gains.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) said two operatives working for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) were tracked down and killed during an operation to apprehend them earlier Saturday.
The SBU said the pair—a man and a woman—were responsible for the brazen killing of Colonel Ivan Voronych, who was gunned down in his car on Thursday in a Kyiv parking lot. Surveillance video captured the assassin fleeing on foot.
SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk personally oversaw the operation, calling it a “swift and inevitable response.”
“The FSB continues to rely on terror and targeted assassinations, but each time their networks will be exposed,” Malyuk said in a statement.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago, the SBU has expanded far beyond its traditional counterintelligence role, increasingly carrying out sabotage operations and targeted killings inside Russia.
Ukrainian officials have suggested the SBU was behind a car bomb that killed Russian General Yaroslav Moskalik in April, as well as the December 2024 assassination of General Igor Kirillov, a senior figure in Russia’s nuclear and biological defense forces.
The Kremlin has not publicly responded to the allegations of FSB involvement in the Kyiv killing.
