MOSCOW — A Ukrainian lawyer who was defending one of the Russian servicemen currently on trial in Ukraine was found dead on Friday, a government official said during a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.

The official, Anatoly V. Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, said the body of the lawyer, Yuri L. Grabovsky, was buried in an abandoned garden south of Kiev with signs of a violent death and a gunshot wound.

Mr. Grabovsky was representing Aleksandr A. Aleksandrov, one of two Russian servicemen detained by the Ukrainian military in the country’s east in May.

Ukrainian officials claimed the two were Russian officers on a military mission in Ukraine, but Moscow said they had resigned from active duty. In a video statement published by the Security Service of Ukraine, Mr. Aleksandrov admitted that he was on a reconnaissance mission in Ukraine at the time.