Ukrainian authorities are continuing their investigation into the assassination of prominent fascist politician and parliamentary member Andriy Parubiy following the arrest of a suspect, as the government of Volodymyr Zelensky desperately attempts to link the killing to Russian intelligence despite a lack of evidence.
Parubiy, the former chairman of Ukraine’s parliament and along with Oleh Tyahnybok founder of the neo-Nazi, Social Nationalist Party—later known as Svoboda—was shot to death on August 30 in broad daylight in the western city of Lviv. His assassin was dressed as a delivery driver who then fled on an electric bike.
Not long after, Ukrainian authorities announced the arrest of a 52-year old Lviv resident later identified as Mikhail Stselnikov, and immediately attempted to tie the killing to Russian intelligence without providing any evidence.
“We have information indicating the possible involvement of the Russian Federation’s security services in organising the murder,” Vadym Onyshchenko, regional leader of Ukraine’s security service (SBU) said in a statement following Stselnikov’s arrest.
Stselnikov reportedly admitted to the killing calling it “personal revenge against the Ukrainian authorities,” following the death of his son who served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was killed in the battle for Bakhmut in May 2023. Like countless thousands of both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers who died before Russian forces ultimately captured the city, the body of Stselnikov’s son was never recovered.
Despite claims from the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) of ties to Russian intelligence, Stselnikov denied working with Russian security services at a pre-trial hearing. However, he did state that he hoped to be sent to Russia in exchange for the body of his deceased son.
The investigation which is currently being conducted under the special operation name “Siren,” has purported to have uncovered evidence of Stselnikov’s ties to Russia such as his possession of medals which date back to the existence of the Soviet Union. Such medals are found in the homes of millions of Ukrainians, and it is obvious that the investigation is intended to reach a pre-determined outcome of Russian involvement in Parubiy’s killing.
In reality, Parubiy had many enemies and rivals within Ukraine as a lifelong fascist and Russophobe who played a central role in both the Western-backed 2004 Orange and the 2014 Maidan so-called “revolutions.”
For his assistance in bringing right-wing Western-backed governments to power in Ukraine, Parubiy was awarded with an appointment as Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine during the presidency of the right-wing Petro Poroshenko, who played a central role in launching Ukraine’s “Anti-terrorist operation” against separatists in the Russian-speaking Donbass region and launching the civil war that would kill over 10,000 people and last until Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
An avowed admirer of Adolph Hitler, Parubiy also played a central role in accelerating NATO involvement in Ukraine and integrating the country’s various far-right paramilitaries such as the Azov Battalion into the National Guard. Parubiy ultimately resigned from the position in protest of Poroshenko’s signing of the Minsk Protocols which were intended to end the fighting between Kiev and the Donbass separatists.
“I was not a supporter of the Minsk agreements from the very beginning. I believed and still believe that the agreements were signed under very unfavorable conditions for Ukraine. I believe that Putin is not even close to wanting to implement them and his plans for Ukraine will not be stopped by the Minsk agreements. They can only be stopped by force,” Parubiy later said in 2016.
Reports of Parubiy’s assassination in the Western media have conspicuously edited out his neo-Nazi background and his central role in bringing Ukraine’s fascist forces to power with the backing of Western governments and NATO. Parubiyʼs Social Nationalist party, which he founded along with Oleh Tyahnybok, based its entire ideology on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN), was openly racist, admitted only ethnic Ukrainians and used a neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo.
Despite Zelensky’s condemnation of Parubiy’s murder and pledge to use “all necessary forces and means” in the investigation which he reportedly personally oversaw, Zelensky and Parubiy were not friends, but rather political rivals.
In 2019, as chairman of Ukrainian parliament, Parubiy opposed the plans of newly-elected president Zelensky to hold early parliamentary elections, calling them unconstitutional and questioned Zelensky’s knowledge of Ukrainian law. For his opposition to the elections and other Zelensky initiatives, Parubiy fell out publicly with the former comedian-turned politician.
As newly elected president in July 2019, Zelensky told Interfax-Ukraina, “I no longer see any cooperation possible with the chairman of this Verkhovna Rada (...) We will speak with the next parliament.”
As one of the most powerful politicians and leaders of Ukraine’s far-right, Parubiy was adamantly opposed to any negotiations at all with Russia to end the war, let alone an exchange of Ukrainian territory. There is widespread speculation that he could have potentially used his position to topple the crisis-ridden Zelensky government.
Rather than a Russian operation, Parubiy’s assassination very much resembles the killing of Iryna Farion, another far-right Ukrainian nationalist and Svoboda party member who likewise was killed in Lviv last year in broad daylight despite being under SBU surveillance.
Her killer was later revealed to be 18-year-old neo-Nazi Viacheslav Zinchenko, a member of the rival far-right organization NS/WP (National-Socialism/White Power).
As the WSWS pointed out at the time “this type of political assassination in the war has been so far pioneered above all by NATO-backed Ukrainian intelligence. Under the leadership of Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence has carried out a number of political murders of far-right pro-Moscow political figures on Russian soil, such as Illia Kiva, Vladlen Tatarsky and Daryna Dugina, daughter of the Russian nationalist political figure Aleksandr Dugin.”
That such assassinations are a regular part of Ukrainian politics testifies to the intensity of the conflicts within the ruling class and the broader violence unleashed upon Ukrainian society by the dictatorial Zelensky regime, which has imprisoned tens of thousands of Ukrainians, such as socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, for opposition to the NATO proxy war that has killed hundreds of thousands.