Investigative Journalist Killed By Car Bomb In Ukraine’s Capital

Born in Belarus, Sheremet worked as an investigative journalist for Ukrainska Pravda, one of Ukraine’s leading internet news sites, and also hosted a radio show in a career that had set him at odds with the region’s autocratic governments.

Okras, CC-SA 4.0)Sheremet, 44, was killed by an explosion that obliterated his vehicle while driving through Kyiv in the early morning, Ukraine’s interior ministry said.

Authorities say the automobile that exploded Wednesday morning belonged to Alena Pritula, a friend and former Ukrainska Pravda editor who has since been placed under government protection.

Pavel Sheremet was killed in Kiev on the way to work.

An award-winning journalist has been killed in a auto bomb in Kiev.

The so-called Revolution of Dignity swept the pro-European Poroshenko to power in 2014, after protests in Kiev’s Maidan Square ousted the country’s pro-Russian president.

Sheremet, 44, was born in Minsk, Belarus, and worked there and in Russian Federation as a television host and journalist. In the late 1990s, he was given a two-year suspended sentence in Belarus after being arrested while reporting on drug smuggling on the country’s porous border with Lithuania.

Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, said the death of Sheremet, whom he knew personally, was a “terrible tragedy” and ordered an immediate inquiry. Its founder Georgiy Gongadze was murdered in 2000 after opposing then-president Leonid Kuchma – a close ally of Russian Federation at the time.

In turn, EFJ President Mogens Blicher Bjerregaerd said that Sheremet’s murder reminded the global community that the security situation for journalists in Ukraine was “still a major concern”. In 2004 he was severely beaten up in Belarus when he founded Belarussky Partizan, an opposition news outlet.

Since 1993, at least 56 journalists have been killed for politically motivated reasons in Russian Federation, while at least 12 journalists have been killed in Ukraine in the last decade, according to a tally maintained by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Five years ago, he moved to Kiev.

“In Russia, he was known and respected as a journalist and a high-level professional”, the statement said. He was particularly critical of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s harsh suppression of political dissent.

“The authorities must now act swiftly and efficiently to bring the killers to justice”.

Sheremet is survived by a son and a daughter who live in Minsk, where Sheremet will be buried.