Sheremet Case: Prosecutor Reveals Explosives Expert Findings

The court also postponed hearings against three suspects.

During a hearing at the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv in the murder case of Pavel Sheremet, a journalist for Ukrayinska Pravda, the prosecutor presented the findings of an explosives expert examination.

In addition, the court postponed hearings against three suspects, Andriy Antonenko, Yana Dugar and Yuliya Kuzmenko, to September 27.

Recall that the murder of the journalist and one of the leaders of Ukrayinska Pravda took place on July 20, 2016, when a car exploded with the journalist behind the wheel.

The suspects have been in pretrial detention for a long time, however the investigation has never provided the court with convincing evidence of their guilt. 

Expert Examination Conclusion

At the beginning of today’s hearing, the suspects Antonenko, Kuzmenko, Dugar and their defense lawyers, prosecutor Mykhailo Tyshyn and one of the victims’ representatives, as well as the judges and jurors in the case, went to the location of the car bodies, which are material evidence, to inspect them.

After this, the parties to the trial returned to the courtroom, and the prosecutor presented the findings of the explosives expert examination.

Mykhailo Tyshyn
prosecutor in the Sheremet murder case 

During this examination, the expert established that the mass of the explosive substance in TNT equivalent used in the explosive device when the car exploded was 478.4 grams. This established that the explosive device was filled with explosive substance to about half its capacity. 

As Tyshyn added, within this examination the expert also took into account the thickness of the car’s plastic protection, the thickness of the metal, the height of the magnets, the distance between the explosive charge and the surface, as well as other data “necessary for drawing up an objective conclusion.”

Doubts About the Examination

For his part, Antonenko’s lawyer Stanislav Kulik said that he doubts the objectivity of this study.

Among other things, he stated that the explosive substance used to blow up Sheremet has not been identified, and it is still unknown what exact explosive was used to blow up the journalist.

At the same time, the lawyer noted that “I got the impression that the prosecutor wants to prove that somehow the MON-50 mine is connected with the commission of this terrible crime.”

Kulik expressed the opinion that in this case the study is “obviously biased,” and noted that the expert did not conduct sufficient research to at least rule out other explosive devices.

Stanislav Kulik
lawyer for Andriy Antonenko

We have said that similar explosive elements are used in at least two other mines that we know of: the OZM-72 and the MON-90. None of these explosive devices were taken into account during this study either. Therefore, in this case we examined evidence proving obvious things: that the well-known journalist was blown up with an unknown homemade explosive device. Besides all of this, unfortunately, we did not receive any information.

On his Facebook page, Kulik explained that during the inspection of the cars, the prosecutor claimed that the properties of the VAZ cars are similar to those of the Subaru car that exploded.

For her part, Kuzmenko noted that, in her opinion, the investigative experiment regarding the car was not conducted properly.

In addition, one of the victims’ representatives present at the hearing expressed the belief that the experiment was not pure, and doubts that it was the MON-50 mine.

Postponement of Hearing

After this, the court added one of the prosecutor’s documents to the case materials and postponed the hearing of the case against the suspects to September 27.

“The trial is adjourned until 11:00 on September 27,” said Judge Oksana Holub.