Wife of Chechen man accused of plotting to kill Putin was shot dead in Ukraine attack

Couple fought as volunteers alongside Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed insurgents

KIEV: A Chechen man accused of plotting to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin was wounded near Kiev and his wife shot dead when their car was attacked in the Ukrainian capital.

Adam Osmayev, a Chechen volunteer soldier, was injured when his car was hit by a hail of bullets while crossing a railroad track; his wife, Amina Okuyeva, died as a result of the injuries sustained in the apparent assassination attempt. The couple became the latest targets involving high-profile figures in Ukraine opposed to Russia, said The Guardian.



“Adam Osmayev was wounded but he will live,” wrote Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko on Facebook. “I just spoke to him by phone.”

Interior ministry spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo confirmed Okuyeva’s death to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

In 2012, Osmayev was accused by Russian authorities of plotting to kill the Russian president. He was held for two years in a Ukrainian prison but was never extradited to Russia. Osmayev survived one assassination attempt in Kiev on June 1. The assailant was shot dead by Okuyeva on that occasion.

Amina Okuyeva died and her husband Adam Osmayev was injured when their car was hit by a hail of bullets. PHOTO COURTESY: THE GUARDIAN

The husband-and-wife fought as volunteers alongside Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed insurgents in the east of the war-scarred country.

Monday’s incident occurred less than a week after Ukraine opened a terror probe into a bombing attack that wounded Igor Mosiychuk, a nationalist Ukrainian politician and lawmaker in Kiev.

Mosiychuk was leaving a television studio after giving an interview on Wednesday when an explosive device went off near a scooter parked on the street. His bodyguard died on the way to hospital and a passerby was killed at the scene.

Both Mosiychuk and Ukrainian prosecutors said they suspected the Russian security services of being behind the attack. A string of politically charged bombings have hit the Ukrainian capital since last year.



A car bomb killed journalist Pavlo Sheremet in July 2016. The independent Ukrainska Pravda news site’s reporter had denounced the political courses taken by both Russia and Ukraine. And a colonel with the Ukrainian defence ministry’s intelligence service was killed when his car exploded in Kiev in June.

A former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov – a Kremlin critic who had moved to Kiev – was gunned down in broad daylight in the Ukrainian capital earlier this year in March.

All cases remain unsolved and Russia rejects all charges of involvement.

This story originally appeared on The Guardian.