Famous Journalist Killed in Car Blast in Kyiv (Updates)

The car blew up on the cor­ner of Bog­dan Khmel­nit­skij and Ivana Fran­ka street. The car belongs to Ale­na Pry­tu­la, head of Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da, but she was­n’t in the car.

The blast occurred at 7:45 am, when Pavel drove away from home sev­er­al dozen meters.

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Pavel Sheremet was assas­si­nat­ed on the morn­ing of July 20 in Kyiv. The pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al of Ukraine Yury Lut­sen­ka report­ed that an explo­sive device had been found in the car wreck­age.

The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy of Ukraine will ini­ti­ate set­ting up a spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tion group, reports Radio Svabo­da.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists deplores the trag­ic death of Pavel Sheremet, who has been mem­ber of BAJ since 1997.

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Pavel Sheremet was born in Min­sk, Novem­ber 28, 1971. He came to jour­nal­ism from bank­ing sphere, first as a con­sul­tant of econ­o­my pro­grams of the Belaru­sian TV. He was anchor of a week­ly ana­lyt­i­cal pro­gram Prospekt on the BT. In 1996 Sheremet became edi­tor-in-chief of the Belaru­sian news­pa­per Belarusskaya Delo­vaya Gaze­ta, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly start­ed work for the Russ­ian pub­lic tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny ORT as chief of its bureau in Min­sk.

On 22 July 1997, Sheremet, along with a team of ORT cam­era­man and their dri­vers, filmed him­self cross­ing ille­gal­ly from Belarus to Lithua­nia and back again to show the ease with which smug­glers could cross the bor­der. Sheremet and his col­league Dmit­ry Zavad­sky were charged with ille­gal bor­der cross­ing, «exceed­ing their pro­fes­sion­al rights as jour­nal­ists», and par­tic­i­pat­ing in a con­spir­a­cy. On 18 Jan­u­ary 1998, Sheremet was sen­tenced to two years’ sus­pend­ed term and one tri­al year. Pavel Sheremet spent three months in prison dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. Fur­ther, Sheremet’s part­ner and for­mer co-defen­dant Dmit­ry Zavad­sky was abduct­ed on July 7, 2000, fail­ing to arrive for a meet­ing at the Min­sk air­port with Sheremet.

In 2010, Pavel Sheremet was deprived of Belaru­sian cit­i­zen­ship, hav­ing obtained the Russ­ian one.

For the last ten years, Pavel Sheremet con­tributed to sev­er­al Belaru­sian, Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian mass media, includ­ing ORT, Ren-TV, Ogonek, Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da, Vesti; from time to time he worked as an expert for TV Dozhd, news­pa­per Vedo­mosti, news web­site Slon etc.

Pavel Sheremet was founder of the web­site Belarus­par­ti­san and a co-founder of the pop­u­lar sci­ence web­site Istorich­eskaya Prav­da.

For the last five years, Pavel Sheremet lived in Kyiv. Friends report he is to be buried in Min­sk.