Ukraine’s Security Service says it has killed Russian special service agents suspected of gunning down a fellow officer in Kyiv earlier this week, saying it believed Russia’s Federal Security Service was responsible.

SBU colonel Ivan Voronych was shot dead in Kyiv last Thursday morning local time, in what authorities told CNN was an apparent assassination.

The suspects – a man and a woman – tried to “lay low” after the shooting, the SBU said in a statement.

However, SBU and National Police officers established their whereabouts in the Kyiv region, the statement added.

The head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, said; “As a result of covert investigative and active counterintelligence measures, the enemy’s lair was discovered.

“During their arrest, they began to resist, there was an exchange of fire, and the scoundrels were eliminated.”

“I want to remind you that the only prospect for the enemy on the territory of Ukraine is death,” he said in a video, which was apparently filmed in front of the suspect’s bodies.

According to the SBU, the two had been ordered to trail their target to establish his daily routine. They were then directed to a safehouse where a pistol with a silencer was waiting for them.

The SBU is Ukraine’s main security service, responsible for both internal security and sabotage operations against Russia.

Among others, it was responsible for Ukraine’s audacious drone attack against Russian airfields last month.

Voronych’s killing comes at a time when Russia has been escalating its attacks on Ukraine. This week marked both the largest and second largest drone attack of the conflict, now into its fourth year.

Media reports claimed that Voronych was involved in covert operations in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine and reportedly helped organise Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last year.