A 58-year-old man set fire to his Kyiv apartment before taking to the streets with a legally registered weapon on April 18, killing six people and wounding 15 before police shot him dead during a supermarket hostage standoff, Ukrainian officials said.
The attacker, born in Moscow and a long-term resident of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, opened fire on civilians in the Holosiivskyi district before barricading himself inside a Velmart supermarket with hostages. Attorney General Ruslan Kravchenko classified the incident as a terrorist act. No motive has been confirmed.
“He acted chaotically. He approached every person… he was simply shooting people point-blank,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
After a 40-minute standoff in which the gunman ignored a negotiator and refused all contact, officers from Ukraine’s National Police Rapid Response Unit (KORD) stormed the store. The shooter fired on police and was killed. Four hostages were rescued.
A 12-year-old boy, wounded in the attack, lost his father and aunt. His mother was also hospitalized in serious condition, the director of the Kyiv City Health Department told local media.
Investigators from the National Police and the Security Service of Ukraine are now examining all the circumstances of the attack in Kyiv against ordinary civilians.
The attacker was eliminated. He took hostages and, tragically, killed one of them. He shot dead four more people… pic.twitter.com/qIpvjzJ04V
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 18, 2026
Ukrainian law bars citizens with criminal records from holding firearm licenses. Zelensky confirmed the gunman had a prior criminal record. Officials are now investigating how he obtained and renewed a valid permit.
Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko has just reported that the attacker in Kyiv who opened fire on civilians has been eliminated. All the circumstances are being established. At present, 5 people have been confirmed killed. My condolences to the families and…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 18, 2026
Klymenko ruled out a mass review of gun owners. “I believe that people should have the right to armed self-defence,” he said, “especially after the experience when, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, civilians received weapons for national resistance.”
The head of Kyiv’s patrol police, Yevhen Zhukov, resigned on April 19 after video circulated online appearing to show two officers running from the scene after shots were fired. National Police of Ukraine chief Ivan Vyhivskyi suspended both officers and launched a conduct investigation.
Investigation underway on two police officers that fled the scene during Kyiv shooting.
– Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pic.twitter.com/n1ashEHezd
— News Arena India (@NewsArenaIndia) April 19, 2026
“It is especially painful to lose people like this, in an ordinary city, just on the street,” Zelensky said. He directed Ukraine’s National Investigations Bureau to handle the criminal case against the officers.
While roughly 3% of individuals held private firearm permits as of late 2023, the Kyiv shooting has turned national attention toward systemic flaws in the vetting process.
As the government continues to support the right to armed self-defense, the investigation into how a suspect with a criminal past maintained a legal license remains a central challenge for public safety oversight.
