A lawyer for an alleged Russian military intelligence officer being tried in Ukraine has been found murdered, in a case that is likely to become yet another point of dispute between the former allies.
Yuri Grabovsky was defending one of two Russians wounded and arrested in eastern Ukraine last May while fighting for separatists who rely on funds, arms and military experts from Russia in their battle with Kiev's government forces.
Russia denies sending servicemen to help the separatists and claims the two accused – who admitted they were Russian special forces troops before later retracting their words – quit their unit to fight as volunteers in Ukraine’s conflict.
Kiev officials have expressed hope that the men, Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov, could be swapped for Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot jailed this week by Russia in what the US and several EU states called a show trial.
Hearings in the Russians' terrorism trial were suspended earlier this month when Mr Grabovsky vanished from a hotel in Odessa.
Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, Anatoly Matios, said investigators had arrested two men on suspicion of involvement in his disappearance, one of whom had led police to where the lawyer’s body was found early on Friday morning.
"At 4am in the place indicated by one of those arrested, in the woods, or rather on an abandoned collective farm . . . digging revealed the body of the dead lawyer Grabovsky," Mr Matios told reporters in Kiev.
He said the corpse had been discovered 27km from the town of Zhashkov, which is some 150km south of Kiev on the main road linking the capital to Odessa.
Mr Grabovsky appeared to have been severely beaten and then shot, and had been made to wear an explosive device on his leg that could have been detonated had he tried to escape, Mr Matios said.
Both suspects are Ukrainians, and one was found to have a fake passport and false security services identity card, the prosecutor added.
Mr Matios declined to speculate on a motive for the murder, but suggested it could be part of a campaign to discredit his country ahead of a non-binding referendum in the Netherlands on April 6th on whether to support the EU's landmark deal to forge deep political and trade ties with Ukraine.
“The Kiev authorities, despite all warnings, could not or did not want to guarantee Grabovsky’s security,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement, accusing Ukraine’s “anti-Russian” leaders of propagating “Russophobic hysteria”.
Moscow also claimed that “the intimidation and physical elimination of dissenters, even lawyers, demonstrates how anti-democratic, totalitarian tendencies are growing stronger in Ukraine”.
The discovery of Mr Grabovsky's body comes just days after a Russian court sentenced Ms Savchenko to 22 years for her alleged role in guiding artillery fire that killed two Russian reporters in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
The EU said Ms Savchenko should be freed “immediately and unconditionally”, while the US said the trial showed “blatant disregard for the principles of justice”.
