Ukraine Spy Agency Agent To Be Questioned in Sheremet Probe

A former employee of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ihor Ustymenko, will be questioned on Monday May 15 in connection to the murder of Pavel Sheremet, a high-profile Ukrainian journalist. President Petro Poroshenko announced this at a press-conference in Kyiv on May 14.

“Mr. Ustymenko will be called in for questioning on Monday and he will be interrogated,” Poroshenko declared. The President also confirmed that Ihor Ustymenko worked for the SBU and resigned in April, 2014.

The announcement follows a Hromadske investigation that uncovered gaps in the official Sheremet probe and established a possible link to the country's spy agency. The Ukrainian President also promised to meet the journalists behind the story. Some Ukrainian journalists, including some from Hromadske, came to the annual presidential press-conference wearing black t-shirts with the slogan "Who Killed Pavel?", referencing their killed colleague.

Photo: Bohdan Kutiepov, hromadske.ua

Mykhailo Tkach, a journalists from "Shemes" said that at first security didn’t want to let them through in these clothes.

“They didn’t allow us to come in. They said that there was an order not to let in people with signs. After series of calls to their supervisors they let us in,” he said.

President Poroshenko also added that he’s not satisfied with the investigation.

“The first thing I did after the murder was to get world experts for the investigation. I applied to several embassies, and I am grateful to those who replied, FBI representatives, bomb-disposal experts and criminologists,” he said during the press-conference.

In July 2016 a car bomb killed famous journalist Pavel Sheremet on his way to work in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine. Hromadske’s investigative unit “Slidstvo.Info” and the international Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) presented a film investigating the murder.