Ukrainian Home Affairs Official Calls Shooting At Presidential Aide's Car Amateurish

The cartridge cases found after the attack on the car of top Ukrainian presidential aide Serhiy Shefir suggest that while the shots were fired in actual assassination attempt, the perpetrators was unlikely a professional sniper, an interior ministry official said on Thursday

KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2021) The cartridge cases found after the attack on the car of top Ukrainian presidential aide Serhiy Shefir suggest that while the shots were fired in actual assassination attempt, the perpetrators was unlikely a professional sniper, an interior ministry official said on Thursday.

A car carrying Shefir was fired upon near the village of Lisnyky south of Kiev on Wednesday morning. The official himself was not hurt, but his driver was wounded. Ukrainian investigators found about two dozens of cartridge cases at the site of the shooting.

"These are 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition, which is not often found in our country ... Experts will talk about them in more detail .... But it is already obvious that the ammunition chosen by the criminal is simple and rather cheap. That is, although it was not sniper fire, it was not a staging either," Artem Shevchenko, the head of the ministry's communications department, said on Facebook.

He also said that the police have already questioned witnesses to the incident, including a mushroom picker who was nearby and passengers of the car that followed Shefir's car. The police continue to search for evidence in the woods from where the shots were fired, Shevchenko said.

"Today, the police and the National Guard will continue their thorough searches in a fairly large forest area. They will search for everything. Perhaps the criminal left his gun there. Or maybe not," he added.

Ukrainian investigators believe that the attack could have been made to intimidate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Shefir's long-time friend, and could have been masterminded from abroad.