Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin.
It is hard to argue Rozhin's points here. Ukrainian security services targeting Russian civilians and media is bad look, bad optics.
[ColonelCassad] According to the Main Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Moscow Region, Kiva was shot dead with a firearm.
A criminal case has been opened. Again, regardless of Kiva’s personality, I remind you of my position on such issues:
1. The SBU and the GUR MOU must be recognized as terrorist organizations.
2. The treatment of any persons collaborating with the SBU and the GUR MOU should be identical to how persons associated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda are treated.
3. The death penalty for terrorism should be restored in the country. Current punitive measures are seen as insufficient.
4. The creation of a structure identical to SMERSH with a similar methodology and the broadest powers has long been overdue.
5. I would like the praises of Sudoplatov to be confirmed not only by monuments and words, but also by deeds. Both on the territory of Ukraine and abroad.
Some will say the program is too ambitious.
But once upon a time the closure of Echo of Moscow and Memorial in our country seemed incredible. So the water wears away the stone.
Related from regnum.ru
Investigative Committee published footage from the scene of the murder of Ilya Kiva
[Regnum] On December 6, the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee for the Moscow Region published footage from the scene of the murder of former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ilya Kiva.
Investigative Committee published footage from the scene of the murder of ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Kiva. The footage shows the work of investigators and criminologists at the crime scene.
Earlier on December 6, an informed source of the Regnum news agency reported that Kiva’s body was found in the village of Suponevo near Odintsovo, on the territory of the Velich Country Club hotel. During the initial examination, a wound was found on the head and bruises on the face.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (murder). According to preliminary data, Kiva was shot with an unidentified weapon and died on the spot. The most experienced investigators and criminologists are participating in the investigation, the Investigative Committee said.
The search for Kiva’s killer is underway in the Moscow region and a number of other regions of the Central Federal District, employees of all law enforcement agencies are involved in it, a source in law enforcement agencies told the media.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is involved in the murder of Kiva, department representative Andrei Yusov told Ukrainian media . He called the murder an operation of the Security Service of Ukraine. Yusov also threatened that the Kyiv authorities would commit new similar crimes.
Kiva was born in 1977 in Poltava. He worked in the internal affairs bodies, headed the regional branch of the Right Sector (an extremist organization banned in the Russian Federation), and later the Socialist Party of Ukraine, and also served as an adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov . After being elected to the parliament of Ukraine, he criticized the country’s authorities, and after the start of the Northern Military District, he spoke out for peace negotiations, left Kyiv and went to Russia.
Even more from regnum.ru
Who is Ilya Kiva, killed in the Moscow region by Ukrainian special services
by Denis Davydov
On Wednesday evening, many sources vied with each other to report the death of former People's Deputy of Ukraine Ilya Kiva . The Ukrainian side hastened to announce a special operation by the SBU that found the “traitor.” According to Russian telegram channels, Kiva’s bloody body was found lying in the snow in the park area of the Velich Country Club hotel in the village of Suponevo near Moscow. Although initially the news spread that he was found in the cottage.
Not all media outlets have given the news yet, but a message about the death has already appeared on Wikipedia - not even an hour has passed since the news report. But even in the morning of the same day, posts appeared on the politician’s own channel calling for a fight against the Zelensky regime.
“It’s better for Zelensky to commit suicide now, as the losers have always done, in order to take all the problems with him and close the issue. But he is too cowardly and narcissistic for such actions,” Kiva wrote. But, apparently, death found him earlier.
During his short career as a public politician, this man managed to make enemies from all sides.
Kiva first appeared on air in 2014, like many others, coming to fame straight from the Maidan. A hefty, aggressive man quickly won the trust of the head of the Right Sector* party (recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) Dmitry Yarosh, who instructed him to build the party in Kiva’s native Poltava and three other eastern regions of Ukraine. And then appointed him as his confidant in the presidential elections.
Kiva was among the speakers from the “Right Sector”* who spoke on the Maidan at a protest rally against the murder by people of the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov of the odious “right-sector”* Sashka Bilyo . At the same time, as a Russian-speaking person and, moreover, accidentally joining the Ukrainian radicals, he caused bewilderment among Yarosh’s comrades. After all, back in 2013, he ran for self-nominated deputy in the Shevchenko district of Kyiv as a “fighter against fascism”, whose grandfather is a Hero of the Soviet Union.
“And the right-wing party is not fascists... Yes, my grandfather fought and defended his land. This is what pushed me to the “Right Sector ” *, ” the hero himself answered the journalists’ question. “ And we do this sincerely and disinterestedly, and Svoboda* are traitors to the right-wing movement who turned the party into a business.”
He seemed to have time everywhere.
He visited the ATO, posing in camouflage and with weapons, already in August 2014 he headed the battalion of the Poltava special police patrol service. In May 2015, he called for the shooting of passenger buses carrying residents of Donbass, these “travelers to the DPR, lovers of referendums and parades of Ukrainian prisoners of war.”
As the deputy chief of the Kherson police, Kiva did nothing to prevent the extremists of the Crimean Tatar “Majlis” from undermining the power poles that supply energy to Crimea, declaring on Radio Liberty (a media outlet acting as a foreign agent) that “ the morality of this “There definitely is, this energy blockade should have been done a long time ago, and this decision is at least a year late.”
But when the command came, Kiva, with the help of a company of “patrol police” made up of his fellow party members, and the National Guard, surrounded and dispersed the camp of right-wing radical activists and Mejlis members*, set up at the Chaplinka checkpoint with the aim of blocking the road to the “occupied Crimea”.
In those days, Ilya Vladimirovich was an ardent supporter of the Ukrainization of Donbass, and in his own style - violent : “Putting and teaching to love. If you don’t love Ukraine, we will make you love Ukraine.”
Heirs of Khimprom: Ukrainian trace in the Moscow region drug network
In the new, reformed system of law enforcement agencies, the energetic and active “pravosek”* became a police lieutenant colonel (although he had not served there a day before), an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, and after serving as deputy chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the Donetsk and Kherson regions, he went to Heads of the Department for Countering Drug Crime of the National Police.
At the same time, in September 2016, the management of the Inter TV channel accused Ilya Kiva of participating in the arson of the channel’s main office building as part of a group of “activists.” Radicals staged a protest against the channel’s supposedly “pro-Russian” content, during which a fire broke out after clashes. Journalists named Minister Avakov as the organizer of the action, and he, in turn, accused the TV channel of provoking the attack on his office.
No one knows for certain what the lieutenant colonel did in drug control as a civil servant, since he is remembered mainly for his constant statements of a discriminatory nature and “homonegativism.” And also because he started hosting the “Traffic with Kiva” program on television.
During his first broadcast, the police chief called for a new approach to drug crime, after which, in the presence of guests of the program, he asked two drug-addicted teenagers to conduct a master class on preparing drugs from improvised materials. And then he invited law enforcement officers into the hall to bring them to justice.
Everything he did caused a flurry of emotions.
Kiva could, for example, praise in February 2016 on Hromadske TV the Azov regiment* (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation), “fighting for the purity of the Ukrainian nation ,” together with which the new police will clear the streets of drug dealers. And then publicly condemn the scoundrels who poured cement into the Eternal Flame on Glory Square in Kyiv and promise to organize its protection.
Then he kept his word - a minibus with Kiwis stood near the memorial for about two months, watching films all night long in the warmth. The author knows of only one case when they came out from there to see how things were going. And the park was simultaneously patrolled by ordinary Kiev residents who united to protect their shrine.
He told the Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR about the “Russian plague”, that Russians are a “pseudo-nation”, “a Russian cannot help but kill, a Russian is a barbarian in his attitude.” And in July 2017, Kiva headed the Socialist Party of Ukraine, promising in this post “red terror against the Ukrainian oligarchy.” In 2019, the desire to fight fascism again prevailed so much that Kiva joined the Opposition Platform - For Life party, which many in Ukraine called pro-Russian.
This shocked the other side, but, according to the chairman of the political council of the OPZZh Viktor Medvedchuk , the new comrade-in-arms rethought many of the events of Euromaidan and recognized that Russia’s participation in resolving the conflict in Donbass was extremely necessary.
Now Kiva is regularly accused of Ukrainophobia. And on July 29, 2021, he created another furore, calling the Maidan a “coup d’etat” and expressing regret that Viktor Yanukovych “did not crush the Euromaidan with tanks.”
The MP finally determined his line in his new role in October of the same year, congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin on his birthday and calling him a “great ruler.” A video was recorded right in the Verkhovna Rada in which the Russian leader was wished “health, strength and God’s blessing.” For this, criminal proceedings were opened against Kiva under the article “High Treason.”
Another suspicion of treason and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine was announced to Kiev on March 6, 2022 by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Irina Venediktova. On March 15, he was deprived of his deputy mandate and put on the international wanted list.
However, on January 30, the accused left Ukraine, moving to Alicante, Spain, and from there to Moscow. Here, the political repatriate turned to Vladimir Putin with a request to grant him political asylum and Russian citizenship and then fully supported the North Military District. In Moscow, the former “pravosek”* and Ukrainian anti-fascist became a regular on political shows on central channels. On November 13, 2023, a court in Lviv sentenced Kiva in absentia to 14 years in prison.
What happened on Wednesday evening in the Moscow region was likely the execution of a sentence in a different way.
That dragon, in whose birth and growth Ilya Kiva participated during his life, came to devour him himself. This murder only proves once again how dangerous the creature into which the former Ukraine has been turned is, and how fundamentally important it is to remove its poisoned sting without any compromises.