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UKRAINE-POLITICS-MEDIA-CRIME
Ukrainians mark two years since reporter’s unsolved murder
KIEV, July 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Ukrainians and foreign diplomats marked
Friday two years since the murder of top journalist Pavel Sheremet, with
supporters accusing authorities of being unwilling to solve the crime.
The award-winning Russian-Ukrainian journalist for Ukrainska Pravda, who
was known for his fearless criticism of the Kremlin and Kiev leaders, died
when a bomb planted in his car exploded during a morning rush hour in 2016.
His murder sent shockwaves across Ukraine but the case remains unsolved.
On Friday morning, dozens of people laid flowers at the scene of the
murder in central Kiev and urged the authorities to explain an apparent lack
of firm results in the ongoing probe.
Sheremet’s colleagues and friends held black placards reading “Two years.
Killers have still not been found”.
Ukrainska Pravda editor Sevgil Musayeva-Borovyk slammed the authorities’
silence, saying investigators should either announce the results of the probe
or acknowledge “their absolute inefficiency.”
“Simply staying silent is inadmissible,” she said.
She suggested that Kiev authorities did not want to conduct a genuine
probe because “the masterminds and killers were somehow linked to
representatives of top Ukrainian officials.”
Foreign diplomats also paid homage to Sheremet, with US Ambassador to
Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch visiting the site of the murder.
“Today, two years since his murder, we remember Pavel Sheremet, a
talented and fearless journalist. Those responsible must face justice,” the
British embassy in Ukraine twitted.
No arrests have so far been made.
Prosecutors said they were pursuing several lines of inquiry and
considering various possible motives including Sheremet’s professional and
private life.
“To date, more than 20 different examinations have been conducted, dozens
of people have been interviewed,” Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the
Prosecutor General’s Office, wrote on Facebook.
The interior ministry said the probe was complicated by the fact that
they could not question representatives of the former Moscow-backed
authorities, many of whom fled to Russia after a Western-backed popular
uprising in Kiev in 2014.
Ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko said Sheremet had been in contact
with “the former authorities” before his death.
A Russian national who was born in ex-Soviet Belarus, Sheremet worked for
a top TV channel in Russia.
He quit the country in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea after the
Kiev uprising and moved to support an insurgency in the east of the ex-Soviet
country.
He also founded the popular Belarussky Partizan opposition website after
he was detained and expelled from his native Belarus for his criticism of
authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
BSS/AFP/RY/1815 hrs