Reporter for Ukrainian Pravda and critic of leaders in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia was driving to work when car exploded

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A car bomb in Kiev has killed Pavel Sheremet, a pioneering journalist and outspoken critic of leaders in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

Security camera footage showed the car had entered an intersection when an explosion ripped through it from underneath. Passersby ran to pull Sheremet out of the vehicle, which later caught on fire.

Sheremet had been on his way to host his morning radio show. He was driving a Subaru XV belonging to his partner, Olena Prytula, the owner of the news site Ukrainian Pravda, where Sheremet worked.

Zoryan Shkiryak, an aide to the interior minister, said investigators suspected a homemade explosive device of 400-600 grams of TNT equivalent that was possibly detonated remotely.

Shkiryak said the likely motive was Sheremet’s professional activities, but added that investigators were considering personal conflicts and the “involvement of Russian special services”. Colleagues including the editor of Ukrainian Pravda said they believed the killing was retribution for his work.

“Pasha [Sheremet] didn’t have business or criminal connections, he always said journalists can’t take weapons into their hands and can’t be close to politicians because closeness hurts their independence. I’m 99.9% sure that it was connected with his profession,” said Svetlana Kalinkina of the liberal Belarusian online television station Belsat, who co-authored a book about the Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko with Sheremet.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Journalist Pavel Sheremet, who has died in a car bomb attack in central Kiev. Photograph: Dmytro Larin/AFP/Getty Images

The Ukraine president, Petro Poroshenko, called the journalist’s death a “terrible tragedy” and ordered specialists from the US and the European Union be brought in to assist the investigation.

Sheremet began his career as a television journalist in his native Minsk. He was arrested after filming himself crossing into Lithuania and back illegally for a Russian television story about smuggling in 1997, sparking a diplomatic spat between Russia and Belarus. Under pressure in his home country, he left to work in Russia before moving to Ukraine several years ago.

He was a supporter of the pro-European movement that toppled president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and was known for his criticism of the Belarusian and Russian governments. He was often detained and occasionally beaten when he returned to Minsk for demonstrations, but “if he thought it was professional duty to uncover something, he did that no matter what threats were made,” Kalinkina said.

Sheremet had won the Committee to Protect Journalists press freedom award and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) prize for journalism and democracy.

'The world can be better': a tribute to journalist Pavel Sheremet Read more

Kalinkina said: “He was first to have an analytical programme on Belarusian television, Prospect. It was critical of the authorities, he showed us this was possible and even necessary.” She added that Sheremet had been worried about the future of the independent Belarus Partisan news site he founded.

Mustafa Nayyem, an MP and former journalist at Ukrainian Pravda, told Radio Free Europe: “It’s terrible. We’re all very sad today.”

Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, tweeted:

Michael McFaul tweet

The founder of Ukrainian Pravda, the investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze, was murdered 16 years ago. His body was found decapitated in a forest outside Kiev. The incident helped to precipitate Ukraine’s Orange revolution.

In his last blogpost for Ukrainian Pravda, Sheremet had warned about how some militia commanders and veterans of the conflict in eastern Ukraine have escaped responsibility for other crimes.



The OSCE’s media freedom representative, Dunja Mijatović, said Sheremet’s killing “reminds us all that the safety situation for journalists in Ukraine must be addressed effectively and timely”.



