Sternenko rejects Shariy's claim that assassination attempt was staged
The volunteer said he suffered a through-and-through leg wound. The SBU previously said the case over the May 1, 2025 attack had gone to court.
Serhii Sternenko on November 5, 2026, rejected Anatoly Shariy's claims on Telegram that the assassination attempt against him was staged using blank ammunition. The volunteer said he suffered a through-and-through gunshot wound to his leg, not his arm as Shariy had written.
Shariy's November 5 publication portrays the assassination attempt as a public relations operation by Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). Its accessible text contains no documents supporting that account. Sternenko called it a fabrication and said he attached photographs of his leg, his security guard's hoodie and a car door after the shots. He nevertheless dated the disputed statements by Shariy to the previous day.
The dispute concerns the attack on May 1, 2025, not a new assassination attempt. That day, the SBU officially reported the use of a firearm and the arrest of the female attacker at the scene. Suspilne also reported Sternenko's statement at the time that he had undergone surgery and that the bullet had passed through his body; he said his life was not in danger.
On April 3, 2026, the SBU said it had completed its pretrial investigation and sent an indictment to court. Investigators allege that a Kyiv resident recruited by Russian intelligence services monitored Sternenko after moving into the same residential complex, received a Makarov pistol and ammunition, and fired several shots at him near his home. One bullet hit his leg, according to the SBU statement.
The description of a leg wound in Sternenko's response thus matches investigators' previously published account, while the claim about blank ammunition contradicts it. Sending an indictment to court is not a conviction: the circumstances described by the SBU remain the prosecution's account.
Primary sources
Documents and statements this story is based on.