A group of unknown individuals tried to take over the apartment of Maria Maksakova, an opera singer and widow of former Russian State Duma deputy Denis Voronenkov, in Kyiv on October 18, the press service for the Kyiv prosecutors said.
They have been detained, the press service said.
“A group of unknown individuals broke the doors and entered the apartment in the Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in Kyiv […] Maria Maksakova’s son and his nanny were in the apartment at that time. The unknown individuals behaved aggressively, changed the locks and demanded that the apartment is vacated,” the report said.
The police received a report that the apartment had been taken over and went to the site. The nine people involved in the illegal actions were later taken to the Shevchenko district police department.
A vigilantism case has been opened. The pretrial investigation is being conducted by the Shevchenko district police department and the investigation is under the prosecutors’ control.
The media earlier reported, citing Maksakova, that her apartment had been taken over. She said there were 15 attackers and she was out of the country when the incident occurred. “My nanny called me and said the door to the apartment where I live was being broken. The door is now broken, 15 people are in the corridor and they demand that they collect their things. The police have been called. I was not in Kyiv at that time. I am very nervous, I am already flying [to Kyiv]. I urge the law enforcement agencies to immediately react to this situation,” the singer said.
Maria Maksakova was a deputy of the Russian State Duma of the 6th convocation (2011-2016). She and her husband Denis Voronenkov moved to Kyiv in late 2016. Voronenkov was killed in the Shevchenko Boulevard in central Kyiv on March 23, 2017.
Russian citizen Vladimir Tyurin, Maksakova’s former common-law husband, is suspected of masterminding the murder. He was put on the wanted persons list in Ukraine in March 2018. The pretrial investigation into the Voronenkov murder case was completed in May 2018. The investigators have a suspected mastermind and five people are suspected of being accomplices.
