Wife of 'Putin plotter' shot dead in Ukraine

The wife of a Chechen accused of plotting to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin has been shot dead in an apparent assassination. 

Amina Okuyeva and her husband Adam Osmayev were in a car when an assailant opened fire from bushes on a railway crossing near the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said Mrs Okuyeva, 34, died in the shooting and Mr Osmayev was injured "but will live".

Meanwhile, interior ministry spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo said police would open an investigation into a "premeditated murder".

In 2012, Adam Osmayev was arrested and charged over an alleged plot to assassinate Vladimir Putin in an attack on his motorcade.

His extradition to Russia was halted by the European Court of Human Rights, but he was jailed in Ukraine for two years for illegal possession of explosives.

A second suspect in the case was handed over to Russian authorities in 2013 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Like his wife, Mr Osmayev was a member of a voluntary battalion which fought against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In June, Mrs Okuyeva and Mr Osmayev survived an assassination attempt in Kiev by a man who claimed he was a journalist for French newspaper Le Monde.

The gunman, later identified to be a Chechen-born Russian, shot Mr Osmayev twice but died after Mrs Okuyeva opened fire on him.

Mr Gerashchenko said the assassin could have been sent by Russian secret services.

Monday's shooting comes less than a week after a Ukrainian MP Igor Mosiychuk was severely injured in a bombing which killed his bodyguard and a pedestrian in Kiev.

Source: SkyNews