Cotswolds public schoolboy 'who plotted to kill Putin' injured and wife killed in Ukraine ambush shooting

Amina Okueva and her husband, Adam Osmaev, in Kiev in September 2017 - Roland Oliphant/The Telegraph
Amina Okueva and her husband, Adam Osmaev, in Kiev in September 2017 - Roland Oliphant/The Telegraph

Aformer public school boy convicted of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Putin has been injured and his wife killed in an ambush shooting outside Kiev.

Adam Osmaev, 36, a who was born in what is now Russia's Chechnya republic and studied at Wycliffe College in the Cotswolds, was injured but will live after his car was hit with gunshots from the bushes at a railroad crossing in the Kiev region, according to Anton Geraschenko, MP and aide to Ukraine's interior minister. 

He had fought for Kiev as a battalion commander in the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Osmaev's wife Amina Okueva was killed in the attack, however, Mr Geraschenko said.

“The best commemoration of her will be a just reprisal against all those who were involved in this horrible murder,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Amina Okuyeva
Amina Okueva was shot dead in the ambush

The attack follows a scooter bombing that injured a nationalist MP and killed two others in Kiev last week. 

Monday's attack was the latest in at least nine high-profile assassination attempts in Ukraine in the past 15 months, including a June attempt on the lives of Mr Osmaev and Ms Okueva.

In that incident, a Chechen man posing as a correspondent for French newspaper Le Monde opened a red gift box to reveal a pistol. Mr Osmaev was shot while trying to grab the weapon, but Ms Okueva drew her own pistol, shot the assassin dead and treated her husband's wounds until help arrived.

Adam Osmayev - Credit: AFP
Adam Osmaev fought for Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists Credit: AFP

Mr Osmaev came to prominence when he was arrested in Ukraine in 2012 and charged with plotting to blow up Mr Putin's motorcade. The European Court of Human Rights prevented his extradition to Russia, but he was imprisoned for three years for illegal possession of explosives and forgery.

The son of a high-ranking official, Mr Osmaev and his family had fled Chechnya after a falling out with Ramzan Kadyrov, who is now head of the republic.