Journalist Pavel Sheremet was preparing a new book about political assassinations in Belarus in the run-up to his murder in 2016, Oleg Alkayev, a friend and co-author of Sheremet, told the Insider, a Russian independent publication, on Jan. 4.
Alkayev believes Sheremet was murdered by the Belarusian KGB because of the book, which would accuse Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko of murdering his political opponents.
EUobserver, a Brussels-based English publication, and the Belarusian People’s Tribunal on Jan. 4 published a recording in which alleged officials of Belarus’ KGB discussed murdering Sheremet, Alkayev and other critics of Lukashenko in 2012. The Belarusian People’s Tribunal is an opposition group run by exiled Belarusian police official Igor Makar.
The Belarusian government has denied involvement in the murders of Sheremet and other opponents of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarusian-born Sheremet was blown up in his car in central Kyiv on July 20, 2016. The Belarusian government has denied involvement in the murders of Sheremet and other opponents of Lukashenko.
The three official suspects – Andriy Antonenko, Yulia Kuzmenko and Yana Dugar – were arrested in 2019. Critics see the evidence against them as very weak and are calling for the suspects’ release.
The suspects’ lawyers said the Belarusian tape refutes the official police version of Sheremet’s murder because there is no evidence of any links between the suspects and Belarusian intelligence agencies.
An undated photo provided by Oleg Alkayev, who organized the shootings of more than 100 people as chief executioner in Belarus while serving as governor at Minsk’s notorious Prison No. 1. Alkayev, who fled Belarus for Germany after alleging the government killed opposition figures, spoke to AFP in 2011. Then he called his former job “disgusting” but he still backed using the measure against the two men detained over the Minsk metro bombing. (AFP)
Book on assassinations
In 2006 Alkayev published the Death Squad, a book about political assassinations in Belarus, jointly with Sheremet, and they were planning to release a new book.
“I don’t doubt that employees of the Belarusian KGB are implicated in Sheremet’s murder,” Alkayev told the Insider. “He was an irritating factor for Belarus because he and I were working on an update of the (2006) book, and (Sheremet) was the editor, publisher and my friend. We were planning to re-publish the previous book and publish a new one.”
He also told Deutsche Welle on Jan. 5 that he had sent an e-mail to Sheremet warning him of a potential assassination attempt on him in 2012 but Sheremet did not respond.
Alkayev said the German police told him in 2012 that an assassination attempt against him was being plotted. The German authorities were tipped off by Makar, he added.
Assassinations in 1999
In 1999 Alkayev was the head of a Minsk detention facility where death sentences were carried out. At that time, Lukashenko’s two main political opponents, ex-election commission head Viktor Gonchar and ex-Interior Minister Yury Zakharenko, disappeared and are believed to be dead.
Alkayev was among the first people who exposed their assassinations and fled to Germany. He said after the murders that the dates when he handed a handgun intended for official executions to police officers on the orders of then Belarusian Interior Minister Yury Sivakov coincided with the dates when Gonchar, Zakharenko and Gonchar’s friend Anatoly Krasovsky disappeared in 1999.
In 2000 Prosecutor General Oleg Bozhelko and KGB Chief Vladimir Matskevich arrested Dmitry Pavlichenko, a police unit chief and a loyalist of Lukashenko, in the case into the murders of the opposition leaders and Dmitry Zavadsky, Sheremet’s friend and cameraman. They also sought to arrest Viktor Sheiman, head of Lukashenko’s security council, and Interior Minister Sivakov in the case. As a result, Lukashenko fired Bozhelko and Matskevych, released Pavlichenko and appointed Sheiman as prosecutor general. The murder case was buried.
In 2001 Belarusian investigators Dmitry Petrushkevych and Oleg Sluchek gave a press conference, saying that the murders were ordered by Sheiman and Sivakov.
In 2019 Yury Garavsky, who fled Belarus, claimed to be a member of Lukashenko’s death squads in an interview with Deutshche Welle and admitted to participating in the murders of Zakharenko and Honchar.
In 2000-2002, Sheremet produced two documentaries on political assassinations in Belarus. Sheremet also co-wrote an Accidental President, a 2003 book devoted to political murders in Belarus and highly critical of Lukashenko.
KGB tape
The leaked KGB tape was allegedly recorded on April 11, 2012, with a secret wiretapping device in the Minsk office of Vadym Zaitsev, who was then head of the KGB. Zaitsev was briefing officers from the KGB’s Alfa Group, an elite counter-terrorism unit.
“We should take care of Sheremet, who is a massive pain in the ass,” Zaitsev said, according to the 2012 recording. “We’ll plant (a bomb) and so on and this fucking rat will be taken down in fucking pieces – legs in one direction, arms in the other direction. If everything (looks like) natural causes, it won’t get into people’s minds the same way.”
Zaitsev said Lukashenko had authorized the planned assassinations and allocated $1.5 million to carry them out.
In the recording, people alleged to be Zaitsev and other KGB officials also discuss murdering other opponents of Lukashenko – Alkayev and former Belarusian police officials Vladimir Borodai and Vyacheslav Dudkin.
Korotkikh version
There is another link to Belarus in the events preceding Sheremet’s killing. On the night before Sheremet’s murder, Sergei Korotkikh, a Belarusian national and member of Ukraine’s Azov volunteer battalion, and other Azov fighters visited Sheremet’s house. Korotkikh has denied having anything to do with Sheremet’s murder and has called him a friend of his.
Korotkikh is a friend and cousin of former Belarusian police officer Valery Ignatovych, who has been convicted for kidnapping in 2000 Sheremet’s cameraman and friend Zavadsky, who disappeared and is believed to be dead.
Oleh Odnorozhenko, a former leader of Azov, has claimed that Sheremet had a conflict with Korotkikh and other Azov members on the eve of the murder.
Korotkikh served in Belarus’ military intelligence in 1992 to 1994 and enrolled at the Belarusian KGB school in 1994.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, whose police force is investigating the case, has explicit links to Azov, which is part of his ministry. Several Azov leaders, including Korotkikh, have also worked as top police officials, and Korotkikh is a personal friend of Avakov’s son Oleksandr.
