Media: Possible Suspects In Sheremet case Deatined

A married couple of ATO veterans was arrested.

According to the Ukrainian online publication Ukrayinska Pravda, in which Pavel Sheremet worked before his death and which is engaged in the investigation of the murder case, Vladyslav Hryshchenko (call sign “Bucha”) was detained on September 24, and his wife Inna (call sign “Puma” ) - on November 5, writes Radio Svaboda.

The court arrested both of them during the investigation of another case, launched in July 2018 - volunteers are suspected of attempted murder and careless handling of weapons.

“According to investigators, the Hryshchenkos and their friend, also a veteran of the anti-terrorist operation, Ivan Vakulenko, were ordered to murder a resident of the Ivano-Frankivsk region. They allegedly made an explosive device and attached it to the victim’s car in the city of Kosovo on July 13, 2018. However, the explosion did not happen, as the injured man himself noticed an explosive device,” Ukrayinska Pravda reports. According to the publication, 61-year-old Mikhaylo Chakurok, who is now also being tried for attacks, robbery and demolition of the building, was supposed to become a victim.

The Hryshchenko case was investigated by the prosecutor's office of Ivano-Frankivsk, but now all the materials have been transferred to Kyiv, to the main police department.

As Inna Hryshchenko herself wrote after the arrest of her husband, the case was transferred to Kyiv with the wording “in connection with involvement in other crimes”. According to her, they are trying to pin on Vladyslav not only the attempted murder in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, but also the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet.

“Can they connect this with Pavel Sheremet? I’m not very sure, since there is no such episode. Perhaps they received some obvious evidence of involvement in other crimes. Which crimes exactly - I don’t know, there is no such information in the case materials that I have,” said lawyer Masi Nayyem, who defended Inna Hryshchenko in court during choosing the restraint for her.

At the same time, the publication writes that the physical appearance of Vladyslav and Inna Hryshchenko really reminds the suspects, whose descriptive information had already been distributed by the investigation. In addition, the case of the couple on attempted murder in the Ivano-Frankivsk region is being investigated by the same investigator as the murder case of Pavel Sheremet.

The National Police have not yet commented on this situation.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky also mentioned the Sheremet case in his video appeal today:

“There are many cases for which we realized that we need to prepare. Otherwise, these people will be released, because all these cases will fall apart. In the courts. Therefore, everything will happen. With the case of Katia Gandzyuk, and Pavel Sheremet, and the cases in the defense sphere.”

44-year-old native of Minsk, journalist Pavel Sheremet, who worked in the media of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, died on July 20, 2016, in a car blast in the center of Kyiv, where he lived and worked for the past five years.

The explosion occurred at 7:45 at the intersection of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Ivan Franko Streets in Kyiv. The power of explosives, according to law-enforcement officers, amounted to 400-600 grams in TNT equivalent. Later, it turned out that it was a modified model of the MON-50 anti-personnel mine.

The National Police of Ukraine opened a criminal case under the article “Intentional homicide”. Ukrainian authorities asked for help, and FBI officers joined the investigation. They considered revenge for professional activity as the main version of the murder. The investigation also did not exclude that Sheremet could have been killed in order to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, for personal reasons or by mistake (the target could be common-law wife of the deceased, owner of the Ukrayinska Pravda publication Olena Prytula — Sheremet drove her car when the tragedy happened).

A month ago, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had set the deadlines for the completion of the investigation of the Sheremet murder, but refused to state the reasons for its classification.