What is wrong with the attempted assassination of the acting deputy head of the State Tax Service of Ukraine

At a time when Ukraine's best sons and daughters are defending the country from Russian invaders, some of the current government officials are clinging to their official positions like a hungry tick in the middle of spring. Today, we are talking about the acting deputy head of the State Tax Service, Yevhen Sokur, who was allegedly assassinated last August. Eight months have passed since then, and the investigation has submitted the case against the suspects to the court, with the first hearing on the merits scheduled for May 25. UNN decided to find out what really happened on August 17, 2023.

So, on Thursday (17.08.2023), around 8:00 a.m., Sokur left the entrance of the building where he lives and went across the playground to the company car that was waiting for him in a nearby parking lot to take him to work. When he entered the playground, two men began to move toward him, one of them holding a sports bag with two bats in it. 

At the moment when the men walked towards Sokur, law enforcement officers ran up to them and put them "face down", i.e. the attempted assassination was detained and prevented. Investigators immediately searched the car in which the men allegedly arrived and found a photo of Sokur printed on an A4 sheet and the same photo of his car.

According to the police, on August 17, 2023, two men were detained who allegedly wanted to inflict grievous bodily harm on Sokur. They had two bats with them, and the photos of Yevhen Sokur and his car, according to law enforcement, directly hinted at the contracted nature of the assassination attempt. Everything seems clear, but a closer look at the situation raises a lot of questions.

The first question concerns the time and place that the defendants chose to carry out their plan - a playground on the territory of the residential complex. The playground is located between high-rise buildings and a school, so it is quite crowded even in the evening, let alone at 8 a.m. on Thursday, when the "attempt" took place. Such a place and time to beat a person with bats could be chosen either by those who want to go to jail for a long time, or by those who did not plan to do anything, and their task was only to come to a certain place.

According to the National Police press service, the suspects were detained as they were preparing to attack Sokur. "The police were able to prevent the attack just as the suspects with prepared bats were heading towards the man as he was leaving the entrance of his house," the statement read.

Therefore, the second question arises after viewing the photo of the arrest of the unfortunate attackers. During their "attack" they did not even take the bats out of their bag. That is, they were walking towards Sokur with the bag in their hands. Didn't they have to take out the bats to realize their plan when they saw their "victim"? Or were they planning to approach him and ask him to wait?

The third question is how law enforcement intervened in time to prevent the attack on Yevhen Sokur? Who could have known about the preparations for the crime, except for the attackers themselves and the alleged customer, since we are not even talking about the purchase of weapons or explosives, which could have been traced in wartime?

The fourth question concerns the photos of Sokur and his car found during the search of their alleged car. First, who uses printouts these days? Secondly, according to UNN , for eight months now there have been no results of the examination that would tell whether the fingerprints of the suspects or someone else were on the paper.  And thirdly, who could have ordered an attack on Sokur, and even one that would not have left a hair on his head? We will return to the last point..

According to UNN, Sokur told the police that he recognized his attackers because he had seen them when he visited one of the capital's supermarkets. According to him, they did not even look in his direction, but entered the store. At the same time, there is no evidence of his words, for example, video recordings from cameras in the store, in the case. Do you also remember everyone who enters supermarkets?

Therefore, the fifth questionlogically arises: how could Sokur, visiting a large metropolitan supermarket on Sunday at 11 a.m., remember two men who allegedly entered the store and recognize them as his attackers? Here, by the way, it is worth noting that the suspects' lawyer, Tatiana Okhrimchuk, filed a criminal complaint against Yevhen Sokur, who, in her opinion, gave false testimony to the investigation. The lawyer said that, in fact, during the interrogation and identification, he had incorrectly described her clients.

There are no fewer questions about how it coincided that the main witnesses in the case are probably relatives - the concierge of the house where Sokur lives and the woman who rented the apartment to the defendants. According to UNN sources familiar with the case, both women have the same surname and are registered at the same address, only the apartment numbers differ - one is number 58, the other 68. At the same time, the concierge was watering the flowers at the time of the "assassination attempt," and her alleged relative said that she had seen a lot of money in their possession during a meeting with the tenants. A strange coincidence, isn't it? Was it possible that Sokur knew that the relative of the conventional "Aunt Galia" whom he sees every day was renting apartments?

UNN also learned from its own sources in law enforcement that two weeks before the attack, another criminal proceeding was opened involving Artem Ageenko and Igor Vorobyov, who later became accused of the attempted murder of Sokur. The case concerned drug and precursor trafficking and allowed law enforcement to legalize surveillance of the men. They never received the status of suspects in the case. However, the covert investigative actions probably allowed the police to investigate the attempted assassination of Sokur in a way that was favorable to him.

If we put together all the gaps and questions that arise after studying the events of August 17, 2023, it seems that it was actually a suicide attack or a staged attack attempt.

Why would someone organize an assassination attempt on themselves, you may ask. To answer this question, we need to go back to June 2023. It was then that journalists became interested in the person of Yevhen Sokur and learned that a criminal proceeding had been opened against the acting deputy head of the State Tax Service for abuse of power. At that time, journalists also once again reminded that Sokur was a protégé of the head of the Rada's tax committee, Danylo Hetmantsev.

This is not surprising, since it was Danylo Hetmantsev who first reported  the attempted assassination of his former assistant Yevhen Sokur on August 18 at 8:01 a.m., which also raises a number of questions. Moreover, according to his own words, he learned about what happened almost in the first minutes after the attack and kept silent because the police asked him to. Yeah, you also call your former boss when you are in danger, right? 

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed the information about the attempted assassination of Sokur at 11:37 a.m. on August 18.

And the official message of the National Police press service was published at 12:35 on August 18.

Both Hetmantsev and the head of the National Police, Ivan Vygivsky , reported that the detainees were giving testimony about the assassination attempt's masterminds. "We are now establishing who ordered it, but we already have some information," Vygivsky said . However, 8 months have passed, and the customer has not been identified, and the case brought to court concerns only Agienko and Vorobyov.

Even social media users did not believe that Sokur had been assassinated. In the comments to the post, some even voiced the theory that the assassination attempt was ordered by Hetmantsev, who wanted to increase his influence on the tax office.

This whole situation with the assassination attempt looks like Hetmantsev realized that the chair in the tax office was shaking under his right hand and that Sokur was unlikely to keep his balance without outside support, so the MP decided to help him with a bright step that would cross out all the accusations in the public field and take the focus away from the criminal proceedings against the acting deputy head of the STS. After all, it was Hetmantsev who practically led his assistant by the hand to the tax office and organized everything so that 29-year-old Yevhen Sokur, who had no experience in the structure, immediately received one of the highest positions. Probably in support of his protégé, Hetmantsev even wrote a bill proposing to appoint the head and deputies of the State Tax Service without a competition. Do you remember how during the Revolution of Dignity Ukrainians fought against nepotism and for open competitions for positions?

So, after law enforcement and journalists became interested in Sokur, something had to be done urgently, because Hetmantsev did not want to lose such a loyal bird to the tax authorities. How could the information flame be extinguished? An assassination attempt was a great option. However, due to the urgency of the idea, a number of gaps appeared in the case.

The interest of the chairman of the Rada's tax committee in this case is confirmed by UNN's sources in the Solomyansky District Court of Kyiv. The judges who considered the case at the pre-trial investigation stage repeatedly complained about pressure from Sokur's "ex-boss" to not release the suspects from custody. However, as always happens, the complaints died at the level of personal conversations. Probably, both Sokur and his influential curator are afraid that the truth about their plan will come out.

And the plan really worked, everyone immediately forgot that Sokur was involved in criminal proceedings opened because of his professional activities and switched to "savoring" the details of the assassination attempt. However, this attention was short-lived, and the defendants are currently being tried in silence. The main thing, as they say, is not to turn on yourself..

UNN will definitely find out what happened to the criminal proceedings opened against Yevhen Sokur. To be continued..