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A suspect in the fatal shooting of prominent Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy has been arrested, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old parliamentarian was killed by an attacker posing as a courier in the western city of Lviv on Saturday, sparking a manhunt.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s interior minister Igor Klymenko said in a statement issued in the early hours of Monday morning that the suspect had been detained in the western Khmelnytskyi region.<\/p>\n
Parubiy rose to prominence during Ukraine’s Euromaidan mass protests, which advocated closer ties with the EU and brought down pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Klymenko said the preliminary investigation had found the killing had been “carefully prepared” with Parubiy’s travel schedule and route mapped out, as well as an escape plan.<\/p>\n
He added that Ukraine’s national police force would provide further details later.<\/p>\n
In a social media post, Zelensky said he had spoken to chief prosecutor Ruslan Kravchenko who advised that the suspect had given an initial testimony. <\/p>\n
“Urgent investigative actions are currently underway to establish all the circumstances of this murder,” he added, while also thanking law enforcement and prosecutors for “working around the clock”.<\/p>\n
Unverified footage, purportedly of the shooting, appeared to show a gunman dressed as a courier approaching Parubiy on the street and holding up a weapon as he walked behind him.<\/p>\n
At a news briefing on Saturday, Lviv police chief Oleksandr Shliakhovskyi said the attacker had “fired about eight shots from a firearm”.<\/p>\n
Sources inside Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies told the BBC that the attacker had dressed to look like a worker from delivery company Glovo. The company said it was “deeply shocked” by the crime and would co-operate fully with an investigation.<\/p>\n
Parubiy was the speaker of the country’s parliament from April 2016 to August 2019. <\/p>\n
He was one of the leaders of demonstrations in 2013-14 which called for closer ties with the European Union. He organised its “self-defence” teams who guarded the sprawling tent camp in the heart of the capital Kyiv during the protest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n