In Kyiv they smelled a “Russian trace” in a high-profile murder
Russian special services could allegedly have been involved in the murder of Ukrainian-Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2016.
Head of the National Police Sergei Knyazev stated this during a public report to President Vladimir Zelensky, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
At the same time, according to him, the crime still remains uninvestigated and various versions are only being considered.
“It was established that the Russian special services on the territory of Ukraine carried out a special operation to destroy the Ukrainian military, who, in their opinion, participated in the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008. Hired saboteurs killed military intelligence officer Ivan Mamchur in the city of Rivne in September 2016 and were supposed to kill a number of military officers from the list provided by the FSB. The killer was identified, and one, Oleg Smorodinov, was detained while crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border with the aim of committing another murder. He has now appeared in court.
In his book “Dead Dreams,” Sheremet spoke specifically about the Russian-Georgian spring of 2008. Therefore, this is the subject of research by the National Police,” Knyazev said.
At the same time, the head of the National Police added that this assassination attempt could be connected with the close cooperation of Pavel Sheremet with the murdered Russian oppositionist Boris Nemtsov.
“It’s no secret that the deceased was friends with Boris Nemtsov, who was shot in Moscow in 2015. Together with citizen Nemtsov, citizen Sheremet worked on the book “Confession of a Rebel,” which was printed in the printing house of the city of Yaroslavl, Russian Federation. The general connections between Sheremet and Nemtsov, sources of funding, the printing of these publications, the distribution of grant funds and money from various foundations in which Pavel was involved are also the subject of research in this criminal proceeding,” Knyazev noted.
Let us recall that earlier the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Fiona Fraser, expressed disappointment that after five years, Ukrainian law enforcement officers have not identified those responsible for the massacres on the Maidan and in Odessa, as well as in the murder of Sheremet.
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