The official suspects in the case into the 2016 car bomb murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet remain in custody, while other people with alleged links to the case face no charges.
Police say they lack sufficient evidence to charge them.
But critics of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov say evidence against some of them could be stronger than that presented against the official suspects — Andriy Antonenko, Yulia Kuzmenko and Yana Dugar.
Another couple
At a Dec. 12 briefing where they announced the names of the three suspects, the police also said that war veterans Vladyslav Gryshchenko and his wife Inna Gryshchenko could have been involved in the murder of Sheremet. However, they have not been charged in the case so far. The Gryshchenkos’ lawyers have denied the accusations.
They were arrested last September in a separate case on charges of unsuccessfully attempting to murder a businessman in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in 2018 by placing a bomb in his car, an attack described by police as similar to Sheremet’s murder.
The Gryshchenkos’ DNA was found on the bomb in IvanoFrankivsk, according to the police.
One mysterious circumstance is that a veteran under investigation in the Sheremet case, Ivan Vakulenko, committed suicide in 2019. Vakulenko drove the Gryshchenkos to Ivano-Frankivsk
in 2018.
The police summoned Vakulenko for questioning in the Sheremet case in an effort to provoke the Gryshchenkos into incriminating themselves. He killed himself after the summons.
In alleged wiretapped conversations published by the police, the Gryshchenkos interpret the case against Vakulenko as a threat to themselves and express worry about it. Inna Gryshchenko also says that they must “protect” Vakulenko to prevent him from revealing information, but then says after his suicide that it is “for the better.”
“If we need to drown everyone to swim ashore, I will drown them,” the person alleged to be Inna Gryshchenko said.
In February, ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s former deputy chief of staff, Andriy Portnov, leaked audio appearing to implicate the Gryshchenko couple. A person alleged to be Vladyslav Gryshchenko tells a person identified as his wife that the couple should contact the investigators and clinch a deal to shift blame for Sheremet’s murder to Vakulenko.
In another recording leaked by Portnov, a person alleged to be Vladyslav Gryshchenko said investigators have no evidence on him and his wife, but do have evidence to implicate Vakulenko.
SBU involved?
Some have also suggested that the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, could be involved — an accusation the SBU denies.
One possible hint at the SBU’s alleged role is that the charges against the suspects were updated in May to include the phrase that “the organizers were acquainted with the methods of law enforcement agencies.”
Avakov acknowledged in December that video footage from four cameras closest to the crime scene had disappeared. The footage was being collected by Avakov’s police and the SBU, prompting suspicions that either of them could have destroyed it.
The Slidstvo.info investigative program offered another possible sign of a cover-up. It reported in 2017 that Igor Ustimenko, a former SBU employee, had been identified as being present near the site of the murder before it occurred.
Ustimenko has denied involvement.
In February, Vasylisa Mazurchuk, a former spokesperson for the Dnipro 1 and Donbas battalions, which are fighting Russia and its proxies in eastern Ukraine, published screenshots of what she says is her correspondence with Interior Ministry Spokesman Artem Shevchenko, who alleges the SBU’s involvement in the murder. Shevchenko declined to comment.
“Your friends from the SBU fucked up and got the guys involved in the murder and gave it to us for investigation — what the hell?” Shevchenko allegedly wrote. “They should have investigated their stuff on their own. But instead they made cops suffer and get slammed by journalists for the Sheremet case.”
Portnov also published an alleged audio recording in January of a potentially related phone call.
In the audio, a person whom Portnov identifies as SBU officer Andriy Omelchenko instructs a person identified as Vladyslav Gryshchenko on how to testify in the Sheremet case and mentions that Gryshchenko has cooperated with counter-intelligence officers.
“You’ve got to find the intelligence officers who worked with you,” Omelchenko said. “They instructed you and put technical equipment on you.”
Korotkikh version
The police may have downplayed other alternate versions of Sheremet’s killing.
On the eve of the murder, Sheremet met veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine from the farright Azov regiment, including one whose violent background immediately attracted attention: Serhiy Korotkikh.
The veterans, later questioned by police, said they had asked the journalist for advice on a protest scheduled for the next morning.
In 2017, then-National Police Chief Serhiy Knyazev said the police were considering the possibility that Azov fighters might be involved. The police, however, have since made no mention of this version.
Azov is part of Avakov’s Interior Ministry, and several of its leaders have secured top ministry jobs.
Korotkikh was a top official at its security unit in Kyiv in 2015–2017.
A self-proclaimed national socialist, Korotkikh studied at the academy of Russia’s Federal Security Service and has been accused of links to Russian and Belarusian intelligence services, although he denies this.
The Ukrainian police previously said they were investigating Russia’s possible involvement in Sheremet’s murder.
Sheremet wrote in 2015 that Korotkikh knew Valery Ignatovich, another national socialist handed a life sentence for kidnapping Belarusian journalist Dmitry Zavadsky. Korotkikh was also investigated and briefly arrested in the Zavadsky case.
Zavadsky disappeared in 2000 and is believed to be dead — like several other critics of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
“In Belarus, Korotkikh is considered a neo-Nazi,” Sheremet wrote in 2015. “…Korotkikh was accused of beating up a group of Belarusian opposition activists in 1999 and assaulting Belarusian anti-fascists in 2013.”
However, at the time, Sheremet said that he had spoken to Korotkikh and did not believe the accusations of wrongdoing against him.
Korotikh also used to be a member of the National Socialist Society in Russia. In 2011, 13 members of the society were convicted for 27 murders and 50 assaults.
He was also investigated over an explosion on Moscow’s Manezh Square in 2007 and for allegedly stabbing an anti-fascist in Minsk in 2013.
Korotkikh has denied being involved in Sheremet’s murder, arguing that he had been friends with the journalist.
