Ukrainian police arrest suspects in journalist's 2016 murder

Ukraine’s interior minister says police have arrested several suspects in the car-bomb killing of a prominent journalist three years ago

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian police on Thursday arrested several suspects in the car-bomb killing of a prominent journalist three years ago., Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said.

Belarus-born journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed in the center of Kiev on July 20, 2016. Ukrainian authorities have been long criticized for their failure to track down the perpetrators.

The suspects arrested include well-known veterans of the five-year war with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Avakov said the arrests follow a “difficult and persistent” investigation, which yielded results he described as “shocking.”

“The public should understand the difference between patriotism and treason,” Avakov said.

Deputy national police chief Yevhen Koval said the suspects had aimed to destabilize the “social and political situation in Ukraine” with the high-profile murder.

One of the suspects, Andrii Antonenko, announced his arrest on Facebook and said that his apartment was being searched. Another was identified as Iuliia Kuzmenko, a doctor who helped troops in the east as a volunteer.

Koval charged that Antonenko and Kuzmenko were accused of planting an explosive device under Sheremet’s car. He said investigators relied on footage from surveillance cameras and other evidence.

Police identified three other suspects, also veterans of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine erupted in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It has killed more than 14,000 people and devastated Ukraine’s industrial heartland.