KYIV – Pavel Sheremet, an award-winning journalist whose reporting challenged the authorities in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine over the past two decades, was killed on July 20 when the car he was driving was destroyed by a bomb in downtown Kyiv.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko called Mr. Sheremet’s death a “murder,” saying the blast was caused by an “explosive device” and that all evidence points to an assassination. Colleagues said they believed it was linked to his work.
Belarusian-born Mr. Sheremet, 44, a journalist at news website Ukrayinska Pravda, was driving to the offices of Radio Vesti to do a regular morning show when the bomb went off at about 7:45 a.m., officials said. The Internal Affairs Ministry said the explosives were planted underneath the car and the blast was set off by “possibly a remote-controlled or delayed-action” detonator.
The explosion destroyed the red sedan Mr. Sheremet was driving, which was owned by his partner, Ukrayinska Pravda owner and founding editor Olena Prytula. The force of the blast was equivalent to some 600 grams of TNT.
The ministry said Mr. Sheremet’s killers had acted “skillfully.”
President Petro Poroshenko said in televised comments that he believes the killing was carried out “with one aim in mind: to destabilize the situation in the country, possibly ahead of further events.”
He said he has requested assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the murder investigation in order to ensure “maximum transparency.”
Alyona Horbatko, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, confirmed to RFE/RL that the FBI would assist its Ukrainian counterparts in the case.
At the scene, kiosk operator Lyubov Pereyenko said she had just opened her shop when a deafening blast shook the ground. “The explosion was so powerful that it sent parts [of the car] flying into my kiosk,” she told RFE/RL.
A barista at a mobile coffee truck said the blast thrust him backward and nearly knocked him to the ground and that it appeared Mr. Sheremet was alive when onlookers pulled his mangled body from the scorched vehicle. “He took a breath. Maybe just one,” said the barista, who did not want to give his name. Mr. Sheremet’s body was smoking, he added, so bystanders poured water over his body.
Mr. Sheremet’s death prompted an immediate outpouring of grief from journalists in Ukraine, where the grisly slaying of Ukrayinska Pravda’s founder, Heorhii Gongadze, 16 years ago has left a cloud over the media and political climate.
”It’s terrible. We’re all very sad today,” Mustafa Nayyem, a member of Parliament and former journalist at Ukrayinska Pravda, told RFE/RL by phone from the site of the morning rush-hour explosion.
Mr. Sheremet was also mourned by colleagues and friends from Belarus, Russia and further afield.
“Shocked by the murder of Pavel Sheremet,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said on Twitter. He called Mr. Sheremet “one of the best” journalists and said: “Pavel was such a decent man. So sad.”
Global rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Mr. Sheremet’s killing a “reprehensible act that has sent a shockwave for freedom of expression in Ukraine.”
President Poroshenko wrote on Facebook that he has ordered security officials to “immediately investigate this crime,” adding that “the culprits must be punished.”
He held a meeting with senior security officials and ordered security to be provided to Ms. Prytula, the president’s spokesman said on Twitter.
Sevhil Musayeva-Borovyk, the chief editor at Ukrayinska Pravda, told RFE/RL that she believes Mr. Sheremet’s killing was related to his work. Other colleagues at the website told RFE/RL that he recently had complained that he was being followed. Colleagues said they were not aware of a particular piece of reporting that might have been a motive to kill Mr. Sheremet.
Born in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Mr. Sheremet had lived and worked in Kyiv during the last five years as a journalist for Ukrayinska Pravda and a presenter at Radio Vesti. He had previously worked for media in Belarus and Russia, where he faced pressure from authorities for his work.
He had served as editor-in-chief of the popular independent weekly Belarus Business News, as well as anchor and producer of “Prospekt,” a news analysis program on Belarusian state television that was banned by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 1995 – a year after the authoritarian leader’s election and a week before a referendum that expanded his powers. The following year, he became the Minsk bureau chief of Russia’s ORT television.
A crusader for human rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, Mr. Sheremet was arrested while shooting a report about smuggling across the Belarus-Lithuanian border in 1997 and sentenced to two years in prison – a move widely viewed as politically motivated. Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience and he was released after three months, when Boris Yeltsin intervened.
A critic of Mr. Lukashenka’s persistent crackdown on dissent, Mr. Sheremet was passionate about the fate of people who disappeared in Belarus in the late 1990s and were never found – including three opponents of Mr. Lukashenka, as well as Mr. Sheremet’s cameraman, Dmitry Zavadsky.
Mr. Sheremet was spokesman for the organization behind Charter 97, a 1997 declaration that called for democracy and human rights in Belarus. Deliberately reflecting the Charter 77 human rights declaration in Czechoslovakia 20 years earlier, the Charter 97 declaration called for “devotion to the principles of independence, freedom and democracy, respect for human rights,” and “solidarity with everybody who stands for the elimination of the dictatorial regime and restoration of democracy in Belarus.”
Under increasing pressure from the Lukashenka government, Mr. Sheremet moved to Moscow in 1998 and became a leading investigative TV journalist. He produced several documentaries, including “Chechen Diary,” “Wild Hunt” and “The Empire’s Last Year.”
Mr. Sheremet continued to face threats and harassment in Belarus, where he was badly beaten while covering an election in 2004. He was a founder of Belaruspartizan.org, a popular independent news website that features relentless criticism of Mr. Lukashenka’s government.
In July 2014, after he had been living and working in Ukraine for several years, Mr. Sheremet resigned from the Russian channel formerly called ORT and now known as Channel One, saying that any journalist in Russia who dared to contradict the Kremlin’s propaganda was “hounded.”
Mr. Sheremet’s reporting earned him the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in 1998. When authorities in Belarus denied permission for Mr. Sheremet to travel to New York for the awards ceremony, the CPJ held a special award ceremony for him in Minsk.
In 2002, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe awarded Mr. Sheremet its Prize for Journalism and Democracy in recognition of his human rights reporting in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
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On July 22, thousands of mourners took part in a solemn procession through Kyiv’s Ukrainian House, including Mr. Sheremet’s friends, colleagues, lawmakers and government officials – among them President Petro Poroshenko.
The next day, hundreds of mourners in Belarus attended the funeral of Mr. Sheremet, which was held at the Church of All Saints in his hometown of Minsk.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, AP, Reuters, and TASS.
Copyright 2016, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington DC 20036; www.rferl.org (for the full text of this story, see http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-journalist-pavel-sheremet-killed-car-bomb/27868777.html).