YALTA (dpa-AFX) – According to the occupiers, high-ranking politician and Ukrainian defector Oleg Zarev was seriously injured in an attack on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow. Zarev’s own Telegram channel confirmed the attack on Friday, citing his relatives. Accordingly, Zarev was shot twice around midnight on the grounds of a sanatorium he ran. He was taken to the hospital unconscious and with heavy blood loss. There is currently no information about the perpetrator, it said.
The Russian secret service FSB announced on Friday afternoon that it had begun an investigation into an attack on Zarev. The politician, who comes from the industrial city of Dnipro, had long been a Ukrainian member of parliament for the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in the Supreme Rada in Kiev. He even ran for president after the pro-European Maidan revolution in 2014, but shortly afterwards fled to Moscow-controlled militants in eastern Ukraine. Since then, he has lived in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014 in violation of international law.
Even after the war of aggression against Ukraine began more than 20 months ago, Zarev actively cooperated with the Russian occupiers. In March 2022, among other things, he called on the military administration of the city of Krivyj Rih to hand the city over to the Russians. Last year, a district court in Kiev sentenced Zarev in absentia to twelve years in prison for calls for a state overthrow and other crimes./ash/DP/zb