On Sept. 22, gunfire hit the car of Serhiy Shefir, a chief aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, in Lesnyky, a village near Kyiv. At least a dozen bullets struck the vehicle. The driver was wounded, while Shefir escaped without injuries.
The reasons for the murder attempt are unclear. There are many versions, including Russian involvement, political or business conflicts within Ukraine or a staged incident, coming the day before Zelensky’s “deoligarchization law’ was approved in parliament.
But we can be reasonably certain of this: The crime is unlikely to be properly investigated or solved. There is plenty of empirical evidence to support this conclusion.
The case into the 2016 murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet has reached a dead end. No hard evidence has been presented against the official suspects, and they have been released from detention.
The perpetrators of the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze have been jailed but the suspected organizer — ex-President Leonid Kuchma — has been let off the hook.
The organizers of the assassinations of many other journalists also remain unknown.
Many other murders have not been properly investigated either. These include those of businessman Yevhen Shcherban in 1996, Odesa-based mafia boss Viktor Kulivar, known by his nickname Karabas, in 1997, as well as Russian politician and fugitive Denis Voronenkov and Ukrainian intelligence officer Maksym Shapoval in 2017.
Nor do we know who organized an assassination attempt on ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in 1996.
Also, there is injustice, most recently, in the August death of Belarusian activist Vitaly Shishov in Kyiv. Authorities suspect suicide, but it looks like murder. In any case, it’s a safe bet the death will remain a mystery.
What’s the reason for this fiasco? It’s the Ukrainian authorities’ utter failure to reform the dysfunctional police, prosecutors, security service and judiciary, which are collectively more focused on collecting their next bribes and/or pressuring independent journalists and legitimate businesses.
If Zelensky were serious about his pledge to “respond strongly” to the murder attempt on his friend Shefir, he would start by dismantling and re-launching Ukraine’s corrupt law enforcement. But this is not happening: his newest judicial reform attempt has been blocked already, like all the previous ones. Another blocked reform is the selection of a new chief anti-corruption prosecutor with the help of foreign experts.
Ex-Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also nipped police reform in the bud, and his successor, Denys Monastyrsky, has not shown any intention to reform anything.
This is what happens when top law enforcement officials are too busy lining their pockets, staging publicity stunts and harassing journalists and activists — they render themselves impotent to solving real crimes.
