Belarusian Investigative Journalist Sheremet Killed by Car Bomb in Kyiv

KYIV – Pavel Sheremet, a pioneering investigative journalist and tireless critic of the post-Soviet governments in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, was killed Wednesday morning by a massive car bomb as he drove to work in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

At the time of his death, Sheremet was on his way to host his popular morning talk show. He was driving the car of his girlfriend – Ukrainska Pravda owner Olena Prytula – when the blast occurred in central Kyiv.

Investigators at the scene believe that a homemade bomb with 500-600 grams of TNT was detonated remotely by an unknown assailant.

Chief Investigator Zoryan Shkiryak said Sheremet’s reports and professional activities were likely the motive behind his killing, adding that investigators would not rule out that Russia’s FSB – the successor to the Soviet-era KGB – had a hand in Sheremet’s assassination.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Sheremet’s death a “terrible tragedy” and requested that specialists from the US and European Union assist in the investigation.

Sheremet began his career as a broadcast journalist in his native Belarus in the 1990s, but later moved to Moscow after revealing a massive smuggling ring between Belarus and neighboring Lithuania.

He later relocated to Ukraine where he became a strident critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko.

Sheremet – a recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists press freedom award and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s prize for journalism and democracy – was Ukrainska Pravda’s most respected critical voice on matters regarding clean government and corruption.

He was a staunch supporter of the 2014 Maidan Revolution that toppled Ukraine’s disgraced pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych.

In recent weeks he repeatedly warned of the dozens of war crimes committed in eastern Ukraine by warlords and militia commanders.

By Nicholas Waller