Ukraine's prosecutor general has claimed the murder of former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov in Kyiv was ordered by a mobster working for the Russian secret services.

Mr Voronenkov fled to Ukraine in 2016 and was gunned down in the capital in broad daylight this March. He had given testimony about former president Viktor Yanukovych, who is being tried in absentia for treason, as well as the presence of Russian forces in Ukraine, prosecutor general Yury Lutsenko told journalists on Monday.

“Representatives of the Russian special services prepared a plan to physically destroy him as a witness,” Mr Lutsenko went on to allege. “The actual person who ordered the murder … was Vladimir Anatolyevich Tyurin, a criminal authority controlled by the Russian FSB."

He added that Mr Tyurin is the former partner of Mr Voronenkov's wife Maria Maksakova, a Russian opera singer and ruling party MP who had joined her husband in Kyiv. The results of the investigation will be brought to court, and Ukraine will seek Mr Tyurin's extradition, Mr Lutsenko said.