Whether or not Sheremet’s killing was meant to send a message, the authorities’ response has sent its own. Knowing Ukraine’s miserable record for investigating violence against journalists, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko quickly announced that U.S. investigators from the FBI would also be joining the case. But in the months since Poroshenko’s announcement, the investigation has stalled or never started in the first place – to date, there have been no arrests, and no suspects have been identified. Even a statement by the prosecutor-general noting that the first deputy head of the national police had Sheremet under surveillance before the killing was not enough to impel the official to return early from his vacation to answer questions.
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Ian Bateson: Live by the pen, die by the sword
President Petro Poroshenko attends the farewell ceremony with Pavel Sheremet in Ukrainian House on July 22.
On the morning of July 20, the idyllic calm of Kyiv's leafy center was shattered. A bomb planted beneath award-winning journalist Pavel Sheremet’s red Subaru exploded, killing him instantly and raining down fiery debris on the quiet boulevard. Triggered by remote control, the assassination was intentionally visible, loud, and meant to send a message. What made the loss so hard for Kyiv’s journalist community was that the 44-year-old Sheremet had survived the intimidation and censorship that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, moving from his native Belarus to Russia and finally to Ukraine, fleeing authoritarian presidents who aimed to control the press to secure their own political stability. Sheremet's death has made many in the media fear that Ukraine has returned to its darker days of journalism.
