A vehicle bomb in central Kiev on Wednesday morning killed well-known pro-Western journalist Pavel Sheremet, with the crisis-hit nation’s president demanding the perpetrators are brought to justice.
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Sheremet worked for ORT at the time and the case caused a rift between Russian Federation and Belarus, with observers expressing the view that it was politically motivated.
Sheremet, 44, conducted his journalistic work mainly in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office has said the killing of the journalist is murder.
For the past five years, Sheremet had lived in Kiev, working for Ukrainskaya Pravda and as an anchorman on Vesti radio channel.
The motive for this killing is still unknown as the Ukrainian president purported that the Russia-backed separatists have been attacking the country on all fronts, and they might also be responsible.
“He upheld those standards through his years even as he mentored and inspired a generation of journalists in Ukraine”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova responded to Sheremet’s murder by calling Ukraine a “mass grave” for journalists. In 1997, Sheremet famously served three months in prison for illegally crossing the border between Belarus and Lithuania while reporting on how easy it is to illegally cross the border between Belarus and Lithuania.
The founder of Ukrayinska Pravda, Georgiy Gongadze, was an investigative journalist who was murdered 16 years ago, his decapitated body discovered in a forest outside Kiev.
Journalist Pavel Sheremet with Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov.
He then worked for Russia’s ORT television network and at one point was anchor on the country’s most watched news show Vremya (Time).
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko immediately demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice for this “terrible tragedy”. “Every time I go to Moscow, it’s like I’m in a minefield”, he told Reuters in an interview.
In 2002, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 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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Sheremet was married and had two sons and a daughter.
