Authorities said the gunman first set fire to an apartment, then opened fire in the street before taking hostages inside a local store.
KYIV, Ukraine — A gunman opened fire in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district on Saturday, killing six people, wounding 14 and turning a neighborhood supermarket into a hostage scene before Ukrainian special police stormed the building and shot him dead.
By Sunday, eight wounded people, including a child, were still in the hospital, city officials said. Investigators were treating the attack as terrorism, reviewing the conduct of patrol officers seen retreating in video from the scene and examining how the 58-year-old suspect kept a valid gun permit. The case shook the Ukrainian capital because the bloodshed came not from a missile strike or drone attack, but from a man firing on neighbors and shoppers in broad daylight in a busy residential part of the city.
Public updates showed how quickly the toll climbed. At 6:18 p.m. Saturday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were dead and five wounded after shots were reported on a street in Holosiivskyi district. Less than 20 minutes later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said five people were confirmed dead, 10 had been hospitalized and hostages had been rescued from a nearby supermarket. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko later said the attacker had first set fire to the apartment where he was registered, then moved into the street with a firearm and shot people at close range before entering the store. By 7:45 p.m., Klitschko said a woman in her 30s had died in hospital, bringing the death toll to six. Officials said four victims were killed outside, one hostage was killed inside the supermarket and the sixth victim later died of her injuries.
Authorities said the gunman made no demands during roughly 40 minutes of negotiations. Klymenko said police tried to reach him through a negotiator and even offered medical supplies because they believed a wounded person was inside, but the man did not respond. Zelenskyy said the suspect had a criminal record, had lived for a long period in the Donetsk region and was born in Russia. Police did not publicly identify him by name on Saturday, and officials had not announced a motive by Sunday night. Klymenko said the weapon was legally registered and that the hostages inside the store were customers and employees. That left investigators with several urgent tasks beyond counting the victims and the wounded. They still needed to reconstruct the man’s path from the apartment fire to the street shooting and into the supermarket, and to determine whether anyone had been specifically targeted or whether the attack was random from the start.
The setting made the violence feel especially jarring. Holosiivskyi is a crowded district in southern Kyiv with apartment blocks, shops, playgrounds and steady traffic. Reuters reported that flowers had been left near a residential building a short distance from the supermarket, where the first victims fell. The supermarket itself remained closed and cordoned off on Sunday, with bullet holes visible in its windows and bloodstains still nearby. Residents described a burst of panic that spread in seconds. Daryna, a 31-year-old local resident, said people grabbed children from a playground and ran as the shooting started. Another neighbor, 75-year-old Hanna Kulyk, said she knew the suspect by sight and that he rarely spoke beyond a quick greeting. Those accounts added to the shock surrounding the attack. Kyiv residents have grown used to sirens, missile alerts and wartime disruptions, but shootings of this scale are rare in the city, even after years of full-scale war.
By Sunday, the case had widened from a homicide inquiry into a broader examination of policing, licensing and public safety. Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said the killings were being investigated as a terrorist act. Klymenko said the attacker’s mental state appeared unstable and that investigators would examine how he obtained the medical certificates needed to renew his permit. Ukrainian media, quoting the interior minister, said the man renewed that permit in December 2025 after submitting a medical certificate. The police response also came under pressure after video spread online showing patrol officers running from the scene. Reuters said Yevhen Zhukov, the head of Ukraine’s Patrol Police, resigned Sunday after the footage circulated widely. Klymenko called the officers’ behavior “a disgrace to the entire system” and said investigators would also review decisions made by their superiors. Because the suspect was killed during the assault, there is no immediate criminal case against a living defendant, but the official investigations now reach far beyond the dead gunman.
The consequences were still unfolding a day later. Klitschko said eight people remained hospitalized, including a child in moderate condition, while one adult was in critical condition and others were being treated for serious injuries. The attack also reopened debate inside Ukraine about civilian access to firearms for self-defense, an issue Klymenko raised publicly as he questioned how the shooter passed the medical review required to keep his permit. For now, though, the central questions remain narrow and concrete. Investigators are expected to focus on forensic findings from the apartment fire and shooting scene, witness statements, digital evidence, the path of the weapon through the permit system and the internal review of police actions during the first minutes of the attack. Officials have promised to make verified facts public, but many of the basic motives behind the shooting remain unknown.
As of Sunday night, the supermarket was still closed, the wounded were still being treated and investigators had not announced a motive or publicly released a full account of how the attack unfolded from the apartment fire to the final police assault. The next public milestones are expected to be findings from the terrorism case, the police review and the firearms permit inquiry.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.