Gunman kills six in Kyiv shooting, police rescue hostages after standoff

A street attack in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district left six people dead, at least 14 wounded and a city still under wartime strain confronting another burst of civilian violence. The gunman fired on people outside an apartment block near a shopping centre, then moved into a nearby supermarket, where he took hostages before police killed him after a standoff.

Officials said four bystanders were shot and killed on the street, a fifth victim died inside the supermarket, and a sixth victim, a young woman, later died in hospital. At least one child was among the wounded, underscoring the pressure on emergency rooms already coping with injuries tied to the broader security crisis in the capital.

Police identified the gunman as a 58-year-old man born in Moscow. Ukrainian officials said he had a prior criminal record and had lived for a long time in the Donetsk region. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said authorities were working to determine the motive and pressed for a swift investigation and the public release of verified facts.

The confrontation lasted about 40 minutes. During that time, negotiators tried to persuade the gunman to release the hostages, and Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said officers even offered tourniquets in case someone inside had been wounded. Ukraine’s special tactical police units then stormed the supermarket and rescued four hostages.

Police said the weapon was legally registered and that the suspect had approached licensing authorities in December 2025 to renew his permit, submitting a medical certificate. The details have already raised hard questions about how a person with a criminal past and a legal weapon was able to keep access to a firearm in a capital under constant stress from Russia’s war.

The shooting was one of the deadliest mass attacks in Kyiv in years, and it landed in a city where air alarms, shelling fears and the routine sight of armed officers have become part of daily life. But the victims were not abstractions of war. They were pedestrians, shoppers and a young woman whose death in hospital pushed the toll to six, while neighbors in Holosiivskyi were left to absorb another act of violence in a city that has already carried too much.