A shocking mass shooting in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv that left six civilians dead and 14 others injured has triggered a high-level political shakeup, with the head of the country’s patrol police stepping down after two of his officers faced widespread backlash for reportedly abandoning the scene. The violence unfolded Saturday in Kyiv’s southern Holosiivskyi District, where the attacker first set fire to his own apartment before opening fire on random civilians on a public street. After the initial rampage, the gunman barricaded himself inside a nearby supermarket and took multiple hostages, before he was ultimately killed in a subsequent shootout with law enforcement. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, video footage circulated widely across social media platforms that appeared to show the two responding patrol officers fleeing the scene, leaving vulnerable civilians without protection as the shooter was still active. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Igor Klymenko quickly announced that the two officers at the center of the controversy had been suspended pending a full official investigation into their conduct. In a public post on the Telegram messaging platform, Klymenko emphasized that the core police mission of “serve and protect” is more than empty rhetoric, stressing that it requires decisive, professional action especially in life-or-death moments where civilian survival hangs in the balance. He also urged the public not to condemn the entire national police force over the actions of just two individual officers. At a press conference held Sunday, Yevhen Zhukov, the former head of Ukraine’s patrol police, confirmed his resignation, saying the two officers had failed to correctly assess the dangerous situation and abandoned civilians to harm. He labeled their actions unprofessional and dishonorable, adding that as the commanding officer, he took formal responsibility for the incident and was stepping down. Ukrainian authorities have formally classified the mass shooting as a terrorist act, but have not yet publicly confirmed a clear motive for the attack. Klymenko noted that the attacker appeared to have an unstable mental state. As of Sunday, eight wounded victims remained hospitalized, with one in extremely critical condition and three others listed as serious. In a public address updating the nation on the incident, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy backed the investigation into the officers’ conduct, confirming that the two officers were present at the scene but fled rather than stopping the shooter. Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigations had opened a full criminal probe that will also review the officers’ entire professional history. Zelenskyy called the attack particularly devastating, noting that Ukraine already faces daily civilian casualties from Russian military strikes, and losing innocent lives to a domestic mass shooting in an ordinary urban neighborhood is an especially painful blow. New details emerging about the victims confirm that one of the six people killed was the father of a wounded child, and another fatality was the child’s aunt. Law enforcement has identified the shooter as a 58-year-old man originally from Moscow, Russia, who had resided in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi District in the years leading up to the attack. Prior to moving to Kyiv, he lived in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk Region, most of which is currently under Russian military occupation and was the center of a pro-Russian separatist insurgency before Moscow’s full-scale 2022 invasion. Officials confirmed that the firearm used in the attack was legally registered to the shooter, and investigators are currently probing how he was able to secure the required documentation to renew his gun license. Mass casualty domestic shootings remain extremely rare in Kyiv, even amid the ongoing full-scale war with Russia, where the city faces regular Russian missile and drone strikes. In the wake of the attack, Klymenko ruled out implementing broad, universal checks of all licensed gun owners across the country. He argued that Ukrainian citizens should retain the right to own firearms for self-defense, pointing to the critical role of armed civilian resistance when Russia first launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. Under current Ukrainian law, citizens are allowed to own non-automatic firearms if they meet strict licensing requirements, including passing background checks that rule out felony criminal records and documented histories of mental illness. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainians have been legally permitted to carry firearms to defend themselves and their country. Data from a 2023 independent small arms survey estimates that only roughly 3.4% of Ukrainian adult citizens personally own a registered firearm.