Police at the Kharkiv airport have detained a resident of Dnipro who is reasonably suspected in being involved in murdering Vitaliy Oleshko, a civil activist from Berdiansk who has served in Donbas under codename Sarmat, as one of those who had ordered that crime, Viacheslav Abroskin, first deputy head of the National Police of Ukraine, has said.

"Officers of the criminal police detained a resident of Dnipro yesterday when he tried to cross the state border at the Kharkiv international airport. He is reasonably suspected in and is one of those who ordered the murder of the civil activist, an Anti-Terrorist Operation veteran, Vitaliy Oleshnko, who was killed in Berdiansk on July 31, 2018," Abroskin wrote on his page on Facebook on December 17.

He did not reveal any details of the detainee.

At the same time, the press services of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has said that the suspect was identified by border guards when he was trying to board the plane due to fly from Kharkiv to Istanbul.

"When checking the IDs of a Ukrainian national, born in 1984, the law enforcement officers established that he had been wanted under Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (premeditated murder). The man was trying to leave the country on board the Kharkiv—Istanbul flight," the press service of the State Border Guard Service said.

Oleshko (codename Sarmat) was show dead with a shotgun made of a hunting rifle on July 31 in downtown Berdiansk. The police detained five suspects in Oleshko's murder: four in the town of Vasylyivka in the Zaporizhia region, and one — in Berdiansk.

MP Anton Gerashchenko of the People's Front faction said that Oleshko's murderer was a former sniper from the special police unit Tornado who had also served in the Anti-Terrorist Operation. Four other detainees, sportsmen from Dnipro and its region, were his partners in crime.

On August 20, Abroskin said that the police detained several more people involved in the murder of Oleshko, and five persons detained earlier, including the organizer of the crime, were kept in custody.

On September 15, the police reported they detained a person suspected in organizing the premeditated murder of Oleshko.

On September 27, the person suspected in murdering Oleshko confessed that he had committed the crime by order of the owner of the Mojito restaurant in Berdiansk, Zaporizhia region.