Authorities say the gunman opened fire on people in the street, then barricaded himself inside a supermarket with hostages before police stormed the building.
KYIV, Ukraine — A gunman killed six people and wounded 14 others in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district on Saturday, April 18, before taking hostages inside a supermarket and being shot dead by police after a standoff that lasted about 40 minutes.
The attack shook the Ukrainian capital because random mass shootings are rare there, even in a city that has lived for years under wartime strain and regular air raid alarms. By Sunday, April 19, eight wounded people were still in hospitals, including a child, officials said. Investigators had opened a terrorism case, suspended officers who were seen fleeing in video from the scene and started reviewing how the attacker was able to keep a legal gun permit. Authorities still had not given a motive or publicly resolved key gaps in the man’s background.
The public timeline changed quickly as the death toll rose. At 6:18 p.m. Saturday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people were dead and five wounded in a shooting on a street in Holosiivskyi district. He said one child was among those taken to a city hospital and that a supermarket guard was also hurt after the gunman entered the store, where a special operation was underway. Less than 20 minutes later, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said five people were known dead, 10 were hospitalized and four hostages had been rescued. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko later said the attacker moved down the street and shot people at close range, killing four outside before entering the supermarket and killing a fifth person inside. By 7:45 p.m., Klitschko said a woman in her 30s had died in a hospital, pushing the civilian death toll to six.
Officials said the gunman first set fire to the apartment where he was registered, then went into the street with a firearm and opened fire without warning. Zelenskyy said the suspect had a criminal record and had lived for some time in the Donetsk region. Reuters and other outlets, citing prosecutors and police, reported that one of the wounded was a 12-year-old boy whose parents were killed in the attack. Klymenko said the man made no demands during the standoff and that all hostages were evacuated after the special police unit KORD stormed the store. Authorities have not publicly named the suspect. They have also not explained whether he chose victims at random, whether anyone in the street was specifically targeted, or what caused him to set the fire before the shooting began. One more point remained unsettled in public statements: some officials described the attacker as born in 1958, while an earlier Interior Ministry briefing listed 1968, a discrepancy that had not been publicly clarified by Sunday evening.
The setting made the bloodshed feel even more jarring. Holosiivskyi is a busy residential district in the southern part of Kyiv, with apartment blocks, shops, playgrounds and commuter traffic. The first victims fell near a residential building a short distance from the supermarket, and by Sunday flowers had been placed there. The supermarket itself stayed closed and cordoned off, with bullet holes visible in its windows and bloodstains still nearby. That scene stood out in a capital more used to damage from missiles and drones than to a man firing at neighbors and passersby in daylight. Reuters quoted a local resident, Daryna, who said adults grabbed children from a playground and ran as the shooting spread panic. Another resident, Hanna, said the suspect kept to himself and spoke little beyond a quick greeting. Their accounts added to the sense that the attack came with almost no warning for the people around him.
By Sunday, the case had become both a homicide investigation and a test of the city’s security response. Ukraine’s Security Service said the shooting was being investigated as a terrorist act. Because the suspect was killed at the scene, there is no criminal case against a living defendant headed toward an immediate hearing, but investigators still have a wide list of next steps. They must reconstruct the man’s movements from the apartment fire to the street and into the store, review witness accounts, examine the weapon and trace how the permit was approved and renewed. Klymenko said the gun was officially registered and that the suspect had extended the permit for keeping and carrying it in December 2025. That point became central almost at once. On Sunday, the minister said the attacker’s mental state had clearly been unstable and that investigators needed to examine how he had obtained the medical certificates required to renew the permit.
The police response also came under pressure after footage spread online showing patrol officers running away after gunfire erupted. Reuters reported that Yevhen Zhukov, head of Ukraine’s Patrol Police, resigned Sunday after the video circulated widely. The Interior Ministry said the officers seen in the footage had been removed from duty while a service review moved ahead, and Klymenko called their conduct disgraceful. At the same time, he drew a distinction between that response and the later assault by KORD officers who entered the supermarket and ended the standoff. He also said the tragedy had reopened debate over civilian access to firearms for self-defense, a politically sensitive issue in a country where many people have wartime experience with weapons but where the law remains narrower than in some other countries. For investigators, though, the immediate focus remained more basic: who exactly this man was, what pushed him to attack, and whether any earlier warning signs were missed by police, doctors or licensing authorities.
The human toll remained at the center of the official statements on Sunday. Klitschko said eight wounded people were still hospitalized, including one child in stable, moderate condition. Of the adults, he said one patient was in extremely critical condition, three were in serious condition and three were in moderate condition. Doctors were providing all necessary care, he said. Zelenskyy said every verified fact should be made public, and city officials kept the area sealed while detectives and forensic teams worked. The attack left behind a chain of small, painful images: emergency blankets covering bodies, a smashed sense of safety outside an apartment block, a bullet-pocked store window and flowers set down near the place where neighbors were shot. None of those scenes answered the biggest questions, but together they showed how fast an ordinary Saturday turned into one of the deadliest street shootings Kyiv has seen since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
As of Sunday night, the supermarket remained closed, eight wounded people were still being treated and investigators had not announced a motive or publicly identified the gunman by name. The next expected milestones are fuller forensic findings, results from the internal police review and a clearer account of how the shooter obtained and renewed his firearms permit.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.
