The suspects in the case involving the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv have refused to participate in a number of evaluations despite public statements on their readiness to assist in determining the truth, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said.
“Yana Duhar has refused to testify as a suspect and refused several evaluations: handwriting and forensic psychiatric evaluations,” the ministry said in a press release.
It was also reported that Andriy Antonenko refused an investigative experiment and refused to testify during the questioning and Yulia Kuzmenko refused to undergo judicial medical and gabitoscopic evaluations.
“In addition, Andriy Antonenko and Yulia Kuzmenko refused simultaneously questioning,” the Interior Ministry said.
All three suspects refused to take polygraph tests, the investigators said. Duhar earlier participated in such a test, which was initiated by the defense, and Kuzmenko agreed to take it.
Investigators are now continuing to declassify materials related to non-public investigative actions and 32 judicial evaluations are being performed.
A car driven by Sheremet was blown up in central Kyiv early on 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 assassination case. Later that day, the Ukrainian National Police and Interior Ministry held a news briefing, at which President Volodymyr Zelensky also spoke, to inform the public about a number of interim investigation findings and the suspects’ names.
Military nurse Duhar, volunteer and children’s doctor Kuzmenko, and musician and veteran of the war in Donbas Antonenko were officially notified of their status as suspects in Sheremet’s killing. The spouses Vladyslav and Inna Hryshchenko, also Donbas war veterans, were detained as suspects in a different case but were named as possibly having relation to Sheremet’s killing as well.
Ukrainian National Police deputy chief and criminal police chief Yevhen Koval said the investigation was inclined to assume that the primary motive of Sheremet’s assassination was an attempt to destabilize the sociopolitical situation in the country.
