This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
A man who detonated an explosive device on July 5 inside a district court in Kyiv was killed by the explosion and two members of a rapid-response security unit were injured, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
Klymenko confirmed that the man was Ihor Humenyuk, who had been accused of detonating a grenade near the Ukrainian parliament building in August 2015 that killed three soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard and injured more than 140 people.
Humenyuk, a member of the nationalist Svoboda political alliance, was accused of throwing the grenade amid protests over a bill meant to give more autonomy to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The hearing on July 5 was to extend Humenyuk’s pretrial detention, his lawyer said, according to the Ukrainian publication Grata.
The city military administration said the explosion took place at 5:20 p.m. in the Shevchenskivskiy court.
The Interior Ministry’s press service said Humenyuk locked himself in a restroom after the hearing and threw explosives at a guard. He then wanted to leave the building but was stopped when an officer fired a shot in the air. He barricaded himself in the restroom and again threw explosives, which injured the two rapid-response security unit employees.
The employees’ injuries are not life-threatening, but Humenyuk “died from the explosion,” Klymenko said.
Explosives technicians and other investigators are working at the scene, and criminal proceedings have been opened, the Interior Ministry said. Investigators hope to determine how the explosives were brought into the court.
Humenyuk’s lawyer, Oleksandr Sviridovsky, is quoted by Grata as saying that his client had been in pretrial detention center for almost eight years. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, his request to be released from custody to go to the front had been refused.
“He wanted to fight [and] repeatedly appealed [for release]. But, you see, we have what we have,” said Svyridovsky.
