A UKRAINIAN journalist known for his anti-government views was gunned down in broad daylight in Kiev yesterday after a pro-Russian MP was also murdered.

Oles Buzyna was killed by two masked men shooting from a passing car.

Mr Buzyna ran for parliament on the Russian bloc ticket in 2012 and was editor of the pro-Russian Segodnya newspaper before he resigned in March citing threats of censorship.

The killing followed the murder of Oleh Kalashnikov, an MP from ex-president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, on Wednesday. He was found shot dead at his home in Kiev.

Interior ministry official Anton Herashchenko said that both had been due to be witnesses in a criminal case related to pro-Russian activists who allegedly attacked pro-Western rallies in Kiev in 2014.

He suggested the killings could have been orchestrated by Russia to “destabilise the situation in Ukraine from within.”