The Ukrainian wife of a Chechen man accused by Russia of plotting to assassinate President Putin was shot dead outside Kiev on Monday in an attack that also wounded her husband, Ukrainian authorities said.
Amina Okuyeva and Adam Osmayev were in a car that was shot at from bushes near a railway crossing on the outskirts of the capital, interior ministry advisers Anton Gerashchenko and Zoryan Shkiryak said in separate Facebook posts.
The attack follows a vehicle bombing in Kiev last Thursday in which two people were killed and three wounded, including Ihor Mosiychuk, a member of the populist opposition Radical Party.
Okuyeva had links to Mosiychuk, having once worked for him in an advisory role.
“As a result of the injuries she sustained, Amina died. Adam Osmayev was wounded, but will live. I just spoke to him on the telephone,” Gerashchenko told Reuters.
The incident is the second attempt this year on the life of Osmayev, from Russia’s mainly Muslim Chechnya region.
In June, he survived an attack by a gunman, who was in turn shot and wounded by Okuyeva.
Gerashchenko and Shkiryak did not suggest a motive for the latest incident.