Spy wars

Defense Ministry confirms military intelligence officer's death in car explosion in Kyiv

An officer of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Chief Intelligence Directorate, Col. Maksym Shapoval, was killed in a car explosion in Kyiv's Solomensky district on Tuesday morning, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on its website.

"National Police officers, rescuers, bomb disposal experts and criminologists are working at the scene of the incident, which has been qualified as a terrorist act. Measures are being taken to establish all circumstances of the tragedy. The leadership of the Defense Ministry and the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces sends its profound condolences to the family of the serviceman killed," the ministry said.

Censor.NET online newspaper editor-in-chief Yuriy Butusov said that Shapoval headed the special reserve department of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Chief Intelligence Directorate. This unit was actively involved in hostilities in Donbas, including in "the temporarily occupied territories," the journalist wrote on his Facebook account.