Despite facing criticism for failing to solve three high profile murders, Ukraine is actually making progress in the investigations, the country’s general prosecutor says.
In an interview with Ukrainian television Channel 5 late on Dec. 29, Yuri Lutsenko claimed that he can solve the assassinations of activist Kateryna Gandziuk and journalists Georgiy Gongadze and Pavel Sheremet.
In over two years as Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Lutsenko has always claimed that these crimes were a top priority. So far, however, he has failed to solve them.
Moreover, until now, there has hardly been any news about the progress of the investigations.
Lutsenko talks Gandziuk murder
According to Lutsenko, the country’s detectives know the last name of the person who hired the killer of whistleblower official Kateryna Gandziuk. The killer splashed sulphuric acid in Gandziuk’s face in July 2018, causing severe burns to her head and body. She died three months later in a Kyiv hospital.
Lutsenko said that law enforcement still needs to collect more evidence before it can reveal the alleged killer’s name. “The investigation will reveal it,” the prosecutor said. “The surname will be announced when the investigating officers have enough evidence. I already know the surname.”
Gandziuk was a civic activist and city council member from Kherson, some 550 kilometers south of Kyiv, who worked to expose corruption in and around her city. Gandziuk’s supporters believe the attack was motivated by her activism.
Although it was just one in a series of attacks on activists in Ukraine in 2018, Gandziuk, who was 33, became the symbol of a protest movement against the state’s failure to bring these attackers to justice.
Lutsenko talks Sheremet murder
The general prosecutor also claimed that detectives are closing in on the prime suspects in the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, who was killed in a car bombing in the summer of 2016.
“The circle of suspects in the assassination has very seriously narrowed. From several thousand (suspects) to several hundred,” the prosecutor said, refusing however to give any particular number.
Lutsenko also refused to provide any approximate timeframe for solving the crime, saying only that “even the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation could not provide us with any help.”
Sheremet was a widely recognized journalist originally from Belarus. He was assassinated in the summer of 2016 in central Kyiv when a bomb placed under his car exploded while he was driving it. The journalist, who was 44, died in an ambulance minutes after the explosion.
Sheremet’s assassination triggered a public outcry in the country. Both the Interior Ministry and the General Prosecutor’s office claimed to devote all possible efforts to the investigation. Even the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations promised to assist.
Lutsenko talks Gongadze murder
Lutsenko said that the investigation of the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze — who was kidnapped and decapitated in 2000, when he was 31 — can be completed in a month.
For that, however, the detectives need to receive the originals of audio tapes recorded by Mykola Melnychenko, a former bodyguard of ex-President Leonid Kuchma.
Melnychenko allegedly recorded numerous conversations that took place in Kuchma’s office before fleeing abroad and publishing some of the recordings. The bodyguard accused Kuchma of ordering the murder of Gongadze, and some of the tapes reportedly support that claim.
However, Melnychenko has never given the original recording device or the original recordings themselves to journalists or Ukrainian prosecutors.
“It’s possible to complete everything in a month if Melnychenko brings the recording and original recording device to Ukraine, which he has been refusing to do since 2004,” Lutsenko said.
“Why does he refuse? Ask Melnychenko himself,” Lutsenko added.
Gongadze, who founded the news website Ukrainska Pravda, frequently criticized Kuchma and other officials. Both of Kuchma’s successors, presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, pledged to make solving the case a priority. Still, it has never been solved.
