On December 12, 2019 detectives of the Main Investigation Department of the National Police of Ukraine notified five people of suspicion in murdering Pavlo Sheremet, a Russian reporter of Belarus origin. Sheremet lived in Kyiv, worked on the “Vesti” radio station belonging to Oleksandr Klymenko, the Minister of Revenues and Duties during Yanukovych’s presidency, and on July 20, 2016 died in a car explosion.
According to sources in the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, immediately after Sheremet’s murder, the main investigative avenue was involvement in the crime of Sergey Korotkykh, a famous Russian Nazi of Belarus origin (a.k.a. “Botsman” and “Malyuta”), a former activist of the Belarus Regional Organization of the Russian National Unity and the co-founder of the National Socialist Society. However, this avenue could not be explored as Korotkykh is a person close to Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs, and is a friend of the Minister’s son Oleksandr Avakov. More details about Korotkykh and the “Belarus trace” in Sheremet’s murder are provided on the “Belarus Partisan” website.
Shortly before arresting the suspects, virtually all the prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, who have been investigating the case for three years, had been fired, and the team had been dissolved. Regarding individuals currently notified of suspicion in murdering Sheremet, sources from the Prosecutor General’s Office admit that some of them might indeed be involved in committing this crime, but no evidence could have been gathered in three years. That is why Oleksandr Lukashenko, the Head of the Office of the Oversight of Law Compliance by the National Police of Ukraine of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, signed off on the notice of suspicion only when threatened to be fired. On December 11, 2019 Lukashenko, famous among the prosecutors for his cars and real estate, was about to sit the third stage of the attestation (interview) as a part of yet another reform of the prosecutor’s office. However, right before arresting suspects in “Sheremet’s case,” Lukashenko’s interview in the Prosecutor General’s Office had been postponed, and his attestation rescheduled for December 19.
