Ukraine’s National Police Name Presumed Organizer In Pavel Sheremet Case

The lawyer published the text of official suspicion.

The lawyer of Yulia Kuzmenko, a suspect in the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, Vlad Dobosh on his Facebook published the text of the suspicion, which indicates that the musician and volunteer Andriy Antonenko is the organizer of the murder of Sheremet, reports gordonua.com.

“Pre-trial investigation has established that Andriy Antonenko, born on October 2, 1971, was carried away by ultranationalist ideas, cultivating the greatness of the Aryan race, dividing society according to the principle of nationality, trying to make his views a matter of public attention ... being in the territory of the ATO, he decided to create an organized group of volunteers and people who have undergone military training as part of volunteer battalions and have skills in handling firearms and explosive substances, in order to commit the murder of journalist and radio host Pavel Sheremet,” the text of the suspicion of the National Police says.

Thus, according to investigators, Antonenko addressed to doctor Yulia Kuzmenko, volunteer Yana Duhar, and a number of people who had similar views with him.

“Antonenko assumed the functions of an organizer and leader of the group,” it was informed.

Investigators emphasize that each member of the group had their own responsibilities.

On December 12, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov announced the detention of suspects in the involvement in the murder of Sheremet. At an urgent briefing, Deputy Head of the National Police Yevhen Koval named the likely murders: nurse at one of the paratrooper battalions Yana Duhar, musician and volunteer Andriy Antonenko, surgeon at the Okhmatdet hospital, volunteer Yulia Kuzmenko, and the family of ATO participants - Vladyslav and Inna Hryshchenko.

According to him, the explosives in the car were laid by Kuzmenko and Antonenko.

The policeman noted that during the ATO Kuzmenko acquired a house and two cars. She was detained on the night of December 13.

Sheremet died on July 20, 2016 in Kyiv as a result of a car blast. The car belonged to co-founder of the publication Ukrayinska Pravda, the wife of the journalist Olena Prytula. The prosecutor's office qualified the incident as a premeditated murder committed in a manner dangerous to the lives of many people.

The investigation examined four versions of the motives for Sheremet’s murder: professional activities, personal hostile relations, destabilization of the situation in Ukraine, murder by mistake (instead of Prytula). In February 2017, the priority version of the law-enforcement officers was Sheremet's journalistic activity. Now the police believes that the main version of the murder is the destabilization of the situation in Ukraine. Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka emphasized that the investigation had not yet found the assassin's paymaster.

On December 9, Hryshchenko stated in court that he had allegedly been offered to take responsibility for the murder of either Sheremet or employee of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Maksim Shapoval, as well as for the electric supports blown up in October 2015 in the Kherson region. On December 10, Ukrayinska Pravda reported that several rulings of decisions in the case of Vladyslav Hrishchenko, who, together with his wife Inna, was under arrest in the case of preparing an explosion in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, disappeared from the Unified Register of Judicial Decisions.

At a briefing among the defendants in the case, the ATO veteran Ivan Vakulenko was mentioned. On November 7, INSIDER wrote that he received a summons on October 16 for an interrogation scheduled for October 21 in the Sheremet case, and on October 18 the veteran’s sister found his body with a head wound. According to the publication, the circumstances of Vakulenko’s death may indicate an attempt to pin the murder of Sheremet on him.