Prosecutors say that the empty shells of two grenades were found near the apartment of anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin’s mother in Rivne, an oblast capital of 244,000 people located more than 300 kilometers west of Kyiv.
Shabunin serves as the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board and has been a perennial thorn in the side of corrupt officials and others obstructing reforms.
“Obviously, this is such a ‘hello’ to me, and not to a 69-year-old woman who sees almost nothing,” Shabunin wrote on Facebook, noting that the person behind the threat has no fear of being caught. “This confidence is guaranteed by the inability/corruption/treason (you choose which) of the interior minister, the prosecutor general, the head of the Security Service and the court gang.”
In July 2020, an arsonist burned down Shabunin’s house. He suspects that the fire was the result of arson as retribution for his activism. Police, as usual in cases of high-profile crimes, have not found the perpetrators.
The devices found outside Shabunin’s mother’s apartment were two F-1 grenades and a plastic box wrapped in Scotch tape, according to a police report published on Dec. 30. But according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the grenades didn’t contain explosives.
At 9.30 p.m. a 37-year-old man called the police and reported that he found potential explosives next to the door of an apartment on Stepan Draganchuk Street.
The residents were evacuated. The explosive ordnance disposal unit carried out a remote inspection and found that the device was incapable of exploding. The grenades will be sent for examination.
Investigators have opened two criminal proceedings for “hooliganism committed with a weapon” and “murder threat.”
Shabunin’s colleague, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Facebook that Shabunin had — just before the incident — written a post critical of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov for sparing President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleg Tatarov from arrest.
Shabunin claims that the police are rigging a case against Maksym Mykytas, the main witness in the Tatarov graft case. “We don’t know yet whether to consider these two events as a coincidence,” Kaleniuk wrote.
Shabunin later wrote on Facebook that an explosive device was planted near the apartment of his wife’s parents, as well.
