MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. An acquaintance of Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of the Ukrainian public association Oplot and a tough critic of Euro-Maidan, killed in a town outside Moscow on Monday, remains in a critical condition, sources from a clinic in Odintsovo have told TASS.
Andrei Kozyrev, who was rushed to hospital after an armed assault on the two as they were sitting in a restaurant, "was immediately operated, he is in an intensive care unit and his condition is assessed as critical," the sources said.
Zhilin, the chairman of Oplot, a group based in Kharkov, received acclaim in Ukraine at the end of 2013 and in the first months of 2014 as an opponent and critic of Euro-Maidan.
After the state coup of February 2014, he was forced to flee the country in the wake of threats with criminal prosecution.
Zhilin’s acquaintance was wounded in the same incident and was taken to hospital.
The armed assault on them took place on Monday night in Veterok restaurant in the Gorki-2 cottage neighborhood. The killer had apparently been waiting for them sitting at a table.
The man armed with a pistol made several shots at the two and vanished from the scene in a car. Zhilin died at the scene after a mortal wound in the head.
Police said later the CCTV cameras had registered the killer. According to detectives, the crime had all the features of a contract murder and had been minutely planned in advance.
Zhilin’s acquaintance Andrei Kozyrev, born in 1977, received several wounds and was delivered to hospital in the town of Odintsovo in a grave condition.