A prominent journalist was killed by a vehicle bomb in the Ukrainian capital, where investigators are probing links to reporting that’s touched on corruption and fighters from in the conflict in the nation’s east.
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Moscow is shocked by the “cynical killing” of journalist Pavel Sheremet in the center of Kiev. An interior ministry official was convicted in connection with the murder in 2013, though it was never determined who ordered it. Senior political figures, including Ukraine’s then-president, have been accused of involvement by rights groups.
Pavel Sheremet, 44, was a Belarusian journalist and TV host who has been exiled in Ukraine for many years due to media repression in Belarus.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “the murder of a Russian citizen and a journalist in Ukraine is cause for very serious concern in the Kremlin”.
In an interview with Reuters in October, he said, “I’m threatened often and given hints”.
The newly elected authorities promised that heavyweight politicians and powerful tycoons would lose their grip on the media – but that vow was never kept.
It was not clear whether the bomb had been set off by remote control or a timer.
In 2014, Sheremet resigned from Russia’s Channel One in protest over coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, saying that journalists who did not follow the “style of Kremlin propaganda” were “hounded” by Russia’s government. Sheremet was in charge of Nemtsov’s memorial service in Moscow.
“There’s too much information coming in about possible provocations in the coming days, and considering today’s bad incident with Pavel it could really be part of some big plan”, he warned. Sheremet faced threats and harassment in Belarus and was badly beaten in 2004 while covering an election.
A special task force featuring representatives of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will be set up in Ukraine to investigate journalist Pavlo Sheremet’s murder.
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The OSCE called on Wednesday for action to address the safety of journalists in Ukraine.
