Several dozen people came to the President’s Office building on May 25 to take part in a rally called “Six Months Behind Bars. Where is the Justice, Mr. President?” demanding a proper investigation of the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, who was killed in July 2016.
After the demonstration in front of the President’s Office, the protesters walked to the Pechersk District Court, which was holding the hearings of three people suspected of killing Sheremet: musician Andriy Antonenko, doctor Yulia Kuzmenko and military nurse Yana Duhar. The suspects had been held in pre-trial detention facilities for six months, hence the name of the rally.
The protesters continued their rally in front of the court, despite the rain, until the hearings were over.
As a result of the hearings, the court released military nurse Duhar on bail, but left Antonenko and Kuzmenko in the pre-trial detention facilities.
A car driven by Sheremet was blown up in central Kyiv on the morning of July 20, 2016. The journalist died at the scene soon after the explosion.
On Dec. 12, 2019, police conducted a number of searches and notified several people of their status as suspects in the Sheremet murder case. Later that day, the National Police and Interior Ministry held a news briefing, during which President Volodymyr Zelensky also spoke, to inform the public about a number of interim investigation findings and to announce the suspects’ names.
Zelensky said on May 20 that he felt responsibility as the head of the state for the investigation into Sheremet’s assassination. If it turned out that the current suspects were not guilty, he would have to fire some investigators, he said.
