Ten days after journalist Pavel Sheremet was murdered by a car bomb in central Kyiv, the sinister, cold-blooded nature of the unsolved killing keeps hitting home.
Surveillance
complaints
Sheremet and his partner, Olena Prytula,
the founding editor of Ukrainska Pravda, complained twice that they were being
followed, Ukrainska Pravda chief editor Sevgil Musaieva-Borovyk said in an
interview with Belaruskiy Zhurnal: Once in November, when Prytula wrote on
Facebook that there were people with a “specific look” outside her apartment,
where they lived together. And then again, in June, when Sheremet said that he
had seen the same car following him several times.
Sergii Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian
parliament and also a former editor at Ukrainska Pravda, said on July 29 that
he also witnessed people surveying Prytula and Sheremet’s apartment last autumn.
Read more: Emotional farewell to celebrated journalist Pavel Sheremet (PHOTOS)
He said that they reported the surveillance
to the Interior Ministry, but received a strange explanation – that the people
they saw were the law enforcers watching an underground casino in the same
building.
“But if there was an underground casino,
why didn’t they just close it down?” Leshchenko told Novoye Vremya. “Olena is convinced that they were following her even on the night of the
murder.”
Soon after the murder some media
reported that Sheremet and Prytula were followed on orders of the deputy
head of the national police Vadym Troyan.
While Troyan is on holiday and
unable to comment, the Interior Ministry has vehemently denied his involvement.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, Artem Shevchenko, told Kyiv
Post that Troyan’s alleged involvement is a “stupid” allegation published by an
“entirely untrustworthy, rubbish site.”
Head of the National Police Khatia Dekanoidze (center) looks on the remains of the car driven by Pavel Sheremet on the site of the explosion in central Kyiv on July 20.
Ukraine’s General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko
confirmed that the investigators were checking the information about Troyan’s
involvement.
“I think it’s possible that this was a
direct attack on a journalist but also it could be an attack to discredit the
actions of the police officers who were following Sheremet and Prytula,” said
Leshchenko.
Video
evidence
Surveillance footage leaked to Ukrainian
media outlet Obozrevatel suggests a woman and a man planted the bomb at 2:38 a.m.
on July 20. In footage, which is less than clear, a woman can be seen near
Prytula’s car while the man appears to stand watch on the other side of the
street. The pair also appear walking down the street where they meet, talk and
part two hours before at 12:22 a.m.
The explosive device used to kill Sheremet was
detonated by a remote control device, according to Yuriy Tandit, an advisor to
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. The FBI, who agreed to assist on the case, were
meant to deliver their assessment of the explosives used on July 25 but Ukraine’s
general prosecutor later said they are not releasing their findings to the
public.
The Ukrainian investigators have been
criticized for cleaning up the crime scene too quickly. FBI investigators
inspected at the location five days later and after two rainfalls.
An inspector explores the site of the car explosion that killed journalist Pavel Sheremet on July 20. (Volodymyr Petrov)
The fact that it may have been a
remote-controlled bomb has led to widespread speculation that the person who
set it off was loitering near location of the killing.
One bystander that many jumped upon as the
potential detonator is an elderly man with a stick who when the bomb went off
was standing on the corner of the street very close to the explosion site. He
appears in surveillance footage also leaked to Obozrevatel. After the explosion,
the man runs towards the car. He is then seen walking away from the scene
towards the Opera House approximately five minutes later in footage obtained
independently by Kyiv Post. There is no evidence to support the speculation
that he was involved.
Lutsenko has expressed
anger at those in the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies for leaking the
footage and possibly disrupting the investigation.
Shevchenko of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry
told the Kyiv Post that they are investigating all avenues when asked if they
considered the man a suspect.
‘Russian
trace’
Lutsenko is also questioning journalists
from Channel 17, known for its pro-Russian coverage of events in the Donbas, who
were the first on the scene, just minutes after the explosion. They filmed the gruesome
last minutes of Sheremet’s life where his torn body is being dragged from the
car.
The journalists said they happened to be at
the location because they were due to interview Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko who
lives nearby. However, later it transpired that Klitschko was not in Ukraine at
the time. The journalists explained that they found out about Klitschko being
overseas when they arrived to his house but still decided to hang around for a while.
Some thought that this supported the
Ukrainian officials’ assertion that the murder had a “Russian trace” – an
assertion which many journalists say is just an easy scapegoat for the
authorities.
The Russian theme has also been alluded to
by Ukraine’s Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios who told journalists on July
25 that he met with Sheremet days before his death. Sheremet was reportedly
unusually gloomy, which he attributed to his recent trip to Moscow. Matios said
that Sheremet met Ukraine’s former Minister of Revenues and Customs Oleksandr
Klymenko while he was there.
Olena Prytula (center), partner of murdered journalist Pavel Sheremet and founding editor of Ukrainska Pravda, sits during the farewell ceremony in Kyiv on July 22. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Prytula made her first statement since her
partner’s killing on July 27 on Facebook. She thanked those who had sent her messages
of condolences. She criticized popular blogger Sergii Ivanov whose recent criticism
of her, she said, was the subject of her and Sheremet’s last conversation.
“We must put an end to this harassment and hatred
on Facebook. This is killing by way of words,” she wrote.
