Two Ukrainian police officers flee shooting scene, leaving victims unprotected — newspaper

MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Two police officers got scared and fled the scene of a shooting in Kiev on April 18, leaving civilians, including a child, without protection, the newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli reported. The publication released footage from the scene, which shows police officers, upon hearing the first shots and people screaming, running away abruptly. Meanwhile, the people who remained at the scene were left without protection. Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klimenko stated that the national police of Ukraine will conduct an official investigation. "I have instructed the head of the National Police of Ukraine, Ivan Vygovsky, to conduct an official investigation into the actions of police officers during the terrorist attack in Kiev and to provide all information to the State Bureau of Investigation," Klimenko wrote on his Telegram channel. Vygovsky reported that the police officers have been suspended from duty for the duration of the investigation, according to the Telegram channel of the National Police. A man reportedly shot and killed four people on April 18 with a carbine in the Goloseevsky district of Kiev and then took shoppers at a local supermarket hostage. Special forces arriving at the scene, after fruitless negotiations, began storming the premises, during which the perpetrator was neutralized. Later, it was established that the attacker had shot one of the hostages in the supermarket. As a result of the perpetrator’s actions, 14 people were wounded, one of whom later died in the hospital. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine classified the shooting as a terrorist attack.