Denis Voronenkov

Education As the son of a serviceman, Voronenkov won a place in the Leningrad Suvorov Military School, from which he graduated in 1988 and then immediately joined the Soviet Army. He had worked in military and federal law enforcement since 1995, joining the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, initially as an investigator.

Political career Voronenkov was elected as a deputy for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, in 2011. Later that month, Voronenkov announced that he had given up his Russian citizenship and left for Ukraine, where he was naturalized as a Ukrainian citizen in December. Voronenkov said that he had no intention of entering Ukrainian politics.

According to Voronenkov, he was persecuted in Russia by the Federal Security Service whom he accused of being involved in drug trafficking. Russian investigators were preparing a criminal case against Voronenkov, but were waiting for his parliamentary immunity to run out in December 2016. In March 2017 a court in Moscow had sanctioned Voronenkov's arrest in absentia. Voronenkov himself dismissed the Russian accusations as politically motivated and stated that the Federal Security Service had offered him to write off the accusations against him if he would pay them US$3 million.

Death

Voronenkov was shot dead in Kyiv as he left the Premier Palace hotel on 23 March 2017. Ukraine's General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko stated that Voronenkov was shot at least three times, including in the head, and died instantly. Anton Herashchenko, an official with Ukraine's Interior Ministry and a Ukrainian lawmaker He also said that Parshov was planted by Russian services as an undercover agent into the National Guard of Ukraine. A police spokesman said the murder was likely a contract killing.

A little more than a month before his murder, Voronenkov said that he feared for his own and his family's security, and that he had been "poking a sore spot of the Kremlin" with his criticism of the Russian president.

In 2019 The New York Times Magazine reported that Voronenkov's death was likely to have been related to him benefiting on his co-conspirators in a case of corporate raiding.

Investigation

In March 2017 the Ukrainian National Guard (UNG) identified the perpetrator of the crime as Pavlo Parshov , a 28-year-old far-right Ukrainian nationalist and former member of the National Guard who was previously suspected in a money-laundering case. He died in custody in intensive care unit from wounds sustained at the scene. His nom de guerre was the Boxer.

Also in march 2017 Ukrainian MIA placed on its wanted list Parshov's suspected co-conspirator Yaroslav Levenets who previously fought in the war in Donbas in the far-right nationalist Right Sector group and had history of arrests for various crimes in the past. Just only eight days before the murder he was detained by law enforcers for illegal weapon possession and was subsequently released. Because he failed to appear for questioning as a suspect, a warrant for his arrest was issued on August 2017. In May 2023, law enforcement authorities requested an extension of the warrant because the suspect’s whereabouts remained unknown. The District Court in Kyiv denied the request to extend the warrant because the suspect was serving in the military, had been awarded the Order of Bogdan Khmelnytsky, 3rd Class, and had received a Ukrainian passport in Dnipro in September 2022. In summer 2025 he took command of the 1st Mechanized Battalion of the Azov-linked 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.

In September 2017 Ukrainian prosecutor's office announced that (a thief in law who was in relationship with Maria Maksakova Jr. before she married Voronenkov) was hired by Oleg Feoktistov , a Russian FSB officer, to organize the assassination of Voronenkov. The latter was said to be at odds with Feoktistov. The investigation did not provide any evidence.''