Investigators say the victim was another Ukrainian national, whose crypto accounts were wiped clean on the day of his death
The stepson of Ukraine’s ambassador to Bulgaria has been arrested and accused of brutally murdering the son of the deputy mayor of Kharkov, in an alleged crypto-related killing in Vienna.
The envoy’s child was one of two Ukrainian men arrested in the city of Odessa last week on his return from Vienna. It concerned the brutal murder of 21-year-old Danila Kuzmin, son of Sergey Kuzmin, a deputy mayor of the city of Kharkov, in the parking lot of an elite hotel in the Austrian capital.
When Austrian police discovered a burned-out Mercedes under a bridge in the Donaustadt district, they found the body of a young Ukrainian man who had been brutally tortured for access to his cryptocurrency accounts.
Upon gaining control of the digital wallets, which were promptly emptied, the perpetrators left his body on the backseat and set the car ablaze. The Austrian authorities believe Kuzmin was already dead when the car was torched.
Following a missing persons alert and coordination between Vienna and Kiev, two suspects have been detained in Ukraine: 45-year-old former customs officer Aleksandr Agoev and 19-year-old Bogdan Rynzhuk, the stepson of Ukraine’s ambassador to Bulgaria.
Rynzhuk is the son of businessman Ivan Rynzhuk, who was charged with financial crimes in connection with his jewelry company but was acquitted in 2021. The firm’s former spokesperson, Olesya Ilashchuk, was controversially appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Bulgaria in 2022. According to her official declaration, Bogdan is also her stepson.
Ilashchuk’s lighting rise in the diplomatic corps drew scrutiny as she had no professional background in international relations or public administration. Ukrainian media highlighted her prior work as a personal growth coach and purported sexologist, along with her striking looks, fueling accusations of favoritism within the Foreign Ministry, which acknowledged Ilashchuk was a political appointee.
