Forensic experts have confirmed the authenticity of a voice recording implicating a former Belarusian KGB chief in a journalist’s murder, Current Time TV, a Russian-language publication in Prague, reported on Jan. 19.
The recording was published on Jan. 4 by Brussels-based publication EUobserver and the Belarusian People’s Tribunal, an opposition group run by exiled Belarusian police official Igor Makar.
In it, a voice alleged to belong to ex-Belarusian KGB chief Vadym Zaitsev discusses murdering journalist Pavel Sheremet in 2012.
Belarusian-born Sheremet was blown up in his car in central Kyiv on July 20, 2016.
Three official suspects – Andriy Antonenko, Yulia Kuzmenko and Yana Dugar – were arrested in 2019. The suspects’ lawyers said the Belarusian tape contradicts the official police version of Sheremet’s murder because there is no evidence of any links between the suspects and Belarusian intelligence agencies.
The St. Petersburg Forensic Laboratory for Audio and Visual Documents compared the voice in the leaked recording with five samples of Zaitsev’s voice published on the Internet, according to Current Time TV.
The laboratory concluded that the voice in the leaked recording was Zaitsev’s.
Anatoly Glaz, a spokesman for Belarus’ Foreign Ministry, said on Jan. 19 that the Belarusian government has proof of Makar’s “fraudulent aims.” He did not say whether the leaked KGB recording was authentic.
The ministry published a separate recording in which an unknown person speaks to a certain “Igor” and asks him how much money he needs, what kind of information he can get in Minsk and how long he will stay in Vilnius.
Most of the recording is barely audible and it is not clear how it could prove that Makar’s “aims” are “fraudulent.” The ministry provided no transcription and no explanation of the recording.
Glaz also said that materials allegedly proving Makar’s fraud have been submitted to Poland, Lithuania and Germany. He said that Ukraine had not yet requested information on the KGB tape from the Belarusian authorities.
“We’re well acquainted with this individual (Makar),” Glaz said. “That’s why we have skeptically observed this whole circus around his statements. We also noticed the reaction of our Ukrainian colleagues, who decided to base a whole investigation around it. And we understand that this happened exclusively for political reasons.”
KGB tape
The leaked KGB tape was allegedly recorded on April 11, 2012 with a secret device in the Minsk office of Zaitsev, who was head of the KGB at the time. 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.”
In the recording, people alleged to be Zaitsev and other KGB officials also discuss murdering Lukashenko’s other opponents, former prison director Oleg Alkayev and former Belarusian police officials Vladimir Borodai and Vyacheslav Dudkin.
Zaitsev said Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had authorized the planned assassinations and allocated $1.5 million to carry them out.
Korotkikh version
There is another link to Belarus in the events preceding Sheremet’s killing. On the night before the murder, Sergei Korotkikh, a Belarusian national and member of Ukraine’s Azov volunteer battalion, visited Sheremet’s house with other Azov fighters.
Korotkikh denied having anything to do with Sheremet’s murder and called the journalist a friend of his.
Korotkikh is a friend and cousin of former Belarusian police officer Valery Ignatovych, who has been convicted of kidnapping Sheremet’s cameraman and friend Zavadsky in 2000. Zavadsky later 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 from 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.
