"Alexei Kovalev was found Sunday shot to death in his home in the Russian-occupied 
Ukrainian town of Hola Prystan.
Nearby lay his girlfriend, reportedly badly injured with stab wounds to her neck, and a Mossberg pump-action shotgun.
Prior to Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February, Kovalev was a
deputy in the Ukrainian parliament and a member of President Volodymyr
Zelensky’s Servant of the People party — but, after much of Ukraine’s
southern Kherson region was seized by Russian troops in the first weeks
of the invasion, he switched sides.
As well as a politician, Kovalev was also closely involved in the agricultural business for which southern Ukraine is famous, reportedly playing a key role in arranging shipments of Ukrainian grain to Russia after the invasion.
Kovalev met top Kremlin official Sergei Kiriyenko, who oversees occupied Ukrainian territory, in June, after which he posted on Facebook: “Russia is here seriously and forever!” Two weeks later, he survived a car bombing.
Perhaps the most exotic assassination attempt so far, took
place in early August when the Moscow-appointed head of Kherson region
Vladimir Saldo — Kovalev’s boss — was apparently poisoned." MT
