Russia’s school for saboteurs

The shooter fled. His target, who died at the scene, was Andriy Parubiy – a former speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, current MP and member of the parliament’s defence committee. In 2014 he had been a key coordinator of the Euromaidan revolution. As his body lay on the pavement, his killer rode into a forest, where he burned his clothes, dismantled his bike and attempted to sink it. Thirty-six hours later he was traced to a village near the Romanian border, identified as 52-year-old Mykhailo Stelnikov and taken into custody.

On 2 September, as thousands attended Parubiy’s funeral in Lviv, Stelnikov told a court he had assassinated Parubiy in order to retrieve the body of his son, a Ukrainian soldier missing in action since May 2023.

“Yes, I admit, I killed him – and I want to ask that I be exchanged for prisoners of war, so that I can go and find my son’s body,” Stelnikov said. Asked why he killed Parubiy, Stelnikov replied: “Because he was nearby.”

The truth is murkier, but what is known sheds light on a pattern of recent political assassinations in which Russia is turning Ukrainians on each other by grooming them to believe they are killing for their country.

Stelnikov’s ex-wife, Olena Cherninka, was shocked to see her ex-husband accused of a high-profile assassination and referring to their son as missing in action. She says she had not been in contact with Stelnikov for 27 years, having raised their son by herself, and had only communicated with him after their son’s death.

When Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, their son, Mykhailo-Viktor, enlisted in the Ukrainian army. The same year, sources in Lviv tell the Observer, his father closed his small business and started taking on odd jobs and spending large amounts of time in the gym. Neighbours and the caretaker of a building where he had been registered said no one had been seen in that flat for a long time.

Stelnikov told investigators that when he came to know that his son was missing in action, he tried to trace him through Telegram channels administered in the Russian Federation.

During these communications, Stelnikov knew he was dealing with either Russians or their representatives, Olviya Herlyak of the Lviv prosecutor’s office said.

In court, Stelnikov said he wanted his son’s body back but denied being blackmailed by Russian security forces. Ukrainian law enforcement sources accused him of following “the playbook of the [intelligence] agent” by demanding to be exchanged in a prisoner swap.

Russia’s spy agencies are constantly recruiting Ukrainians for sabotage, seeking out those living on the edge of poverty, with alcohol or drug dependencies, and teenagers, said Roksolana Yavorska, a spokesperson for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Lviv.

Ukrainians recruited by Russia are thought to have been responsible for the shootings of Demyan Hanul, another Euromaidan participant, killed in Odessa in March; and Iryna Farion, a former MP murdered in Lviv last year, among others.

Russian recruiters on Telegram send mass messages to phone numbers gathered from job search websites, Yavorska says. “The enemy lures them with a call to action – easy money, quickly, requiring only their time.” Vague information without much detail on what needs to be done or how is spread through targeted online advertising or other job-related advertising channels.

Initially, the handler recruits the potential saboteur, who becomes an agent. Most often, agents are sent a few hundred dollars, via different online wallets each time, in order to buy materials for explosives, transport or renting premises, if needed.

Then agents are trained in sabotage. “Each person has their own tasks: some assemble explosives and hide them in caches, others retrieve the explosives and place them at targets specified by the handler, and some assemble and detonate them,” Yavorska said. Sometimes agents get injured during training. In Ivano-Frankivsk, south-east of Lviv, one teenager died and another is in critical condition after explosives they allegedly received from Russian agents were remotely detonated.

Stelnikov closed his business, changed flats and joined Telegram channels in 2022. Police said a search of his latest address revealed dozens of boxes of shell casings, 50 containers of ammunition and a silencer.

The prosecutor’s office is considering three main theories for the killing: Russian involvement, political activity or personal animosity. The SBU says it has evidence that the murder was a contract killing and that Russian special services may have been involved.

Photo by Oleksandr Magula/Suspilne Ukraine/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images