A pro-Russian politician who was a Ukrainian MP, Oleg Tsaryov, is in intensive care in a gun attack.
The former deputy was shot twice around midnight in the resort where he lives in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. When the ambulance arrived, Tsaryov was unconscious and had lost a lot of blood.
Tsaryov’s name was floated last year to head a puppet government in kyiv after Moscow launched its invasion on February 24. That morning Tsaryov declared that “as promised, the denazification operation has begun,” reporting that he “was already in Ukraine” and that soon “Kiev would be “liberated from the Nazis.”
It was the president of the We Stand With Russia movement, Vladimir Rogov, who first reported what happened. “Oleg’s condition is very serious. (…) Oleg was shot. I ask the Orthodox to pray for Oleg’s health,” Rogov wrote on Telegram. A message written by the administrator later appeared on Tsarev’s Telegram channel, stating that the politician’s relatives confirmed the information about the assassination attempt.
In his stage as a Ukrainian MP, Tsaryov formed part of Victor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Oleg Tsaryov was born in 1970 in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), Soviet Ukraine. He represented his region in the Rada and was one of the most fervent supporters of the violent dispersal of the Maidan protests between 2013 and 2014. He called the protesters “terrorists and bandits.” Shortly afterward he was expelled from his party.
In July 2014 he took refuge in the separatist regions and became speaker of the Parliament of Novorossiya, a confederation that includes the separatist People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. He held the position until its dissolution in May 2015.
For years he has been wanted by Ukrainian police on charges of promoting separatism. and violence. After Boris Johnson’s visit to kyiv on April 10, Tsaryov proposed shooting down planes with foreign politicians, even though his son went to study in the United Kingdom. In Ukraine he was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison for “attacking the territorial integrity of Ukraine” and “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.” In addition, in May 2023 he was accused in absentia of treason.
His most famous incident was when, a month after the start of the invasion. On March 20, 2022, Tsaryov addressed the acting mayor of Zelensky’s hometown, Kryvyi Rih, to surrender, warning him that “his” Russian troops “are now near the city.” Tsaryov addressed councilor Oleksandr Vilkul because “they used to be my party colleagues” and recalled that Vikul “had always adopted a pro-Russian stance.” On Facebook Vikul responded to Tsaryov: “Fuck you, traitor, and your masters too!”
Currently he was away from politics and managed clinics in the Black Sea. When his name was floated to replace a deposed Zelensky if the Moscow coup was successful, Tsaryov himself ruled out that possibility, saying that the idea was “quite funny” because he was simply running a health and wellness business in Crimea and he “wasn’t the important enough.”
Other Ukrainians loyal to Vladimir Putin, such as Yevheniy Murayev and Victor Medvedchuk, also sounded like possible ‘viceroys’ imposed by the Russian regime if Moscow’s coup against Kiev had worked. But the abandonment of attempts to take the capital frustrated the ambitions of the entire pro-Russian caste.
