KIEV: Car bomb kills intelligence colonel

A car bomb has exploded in Kiev, killing Maksim Shapoval of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Another individual in the car is reportedly injured.

The attack which happened in broad daylight on a busy street was certainly meant to capture public attention and insofar as it has, some goal has been achieved.

Those responsible for the incident were almost certainly far-right elements within Ukraine’s radical, fascist, neo-Nazi political community who have grown angry with the current regime for a number of reasons.

Economic stagnation and a failure to pursue the war in Donbass in a manner that is violent enough for their liking are generally the two principle grievances of ultra-fascist factions.

A car bomb was used to assassinate independent journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016. Sheremet was a critic of Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko and other leader post-coup Ukrainian elites but he was also a critic of the Russian and Belorussian governments.

Political violence is after all what brought the post-coup regime to power in Kiev but far from receiving universal backing from the far-right, many of the forces behind the Maidan coup of 2014 are turning against the regime and against one another.

Groups like the neo-Nazi Right Sector have committed numerous acts of politically motivated violence against all those who they do not feel sufficiently committed to a fascist future for the country.

The Ukrainian authorities have been quick to label the event terrorism which of course it is. However,  the kind of terrorism it almost certainly is, is the same kind of terrorism that brought the regime to power: that of the far-right.

It is unlikely that this event is aberrational. Political violence is the new norm in modern Ukraine.