Alleged recordings indicate Belarus agents planned Sheremet killing

Agents of Belarus’s security services had plotted in
2012 the assassination of journalist Pavel Sheremet, according to secret audio
recordings released on Jan. 4 by Igor Makar, a former Belarusian security
service agent currently hiding in an unidentified EU country. Sheremet is the
journalist who was assassinated by a car bomb in central Kyiv in July 2016,
having worked in Ukraine about four years at the time.

 

Some of the incriminating comments were made by Vadim
Zaytsev, who served as head of the Committee for State Security of Belarus in
2008-2012. Zaytsev was recorded by a secret device in his Minsk office on Apr.
11, 2012 during a briefing with agents of the elite Alfa anti-terrorist subunit
of the nation’s security service. In that month, Sheremet was still working in
Moscow, months away from settling in Kyiv.

 

The Sheremet murder is intended to be a signal in the
public, Zaytsev said in the recordings. “We need to work on Sheremet, who
screwed us. We will make a (bomb) placement of sorts and so on, so that they
won’t be able to find the arms or legs of that rat. For it to be in a natural
way, but it doesn’t influence the public consciousness. The president is
awaiting these operations,” Zaytsev said of Sheremet, who was born and raised
in Belarus.

 

The discussions were ordered by Belarusian President
Aleksandr Lukashenko, who had also ordered a series of political assassinations
with a budget of USD 1.5 mln, the euobserver.com news site said. Other targets
were Oleg Alkayev, a former prison director who settled in Germany; Vladimir
Borodian, a former colonel; and Viacheslav Dudkin, who had served as the
anti-corruption head.

 

Documents on the security services tracking Sheremet
were also obtained by the investigators, who are members of the Belarusian
People’s Tribunal. No audio manipulation was apparent in the recordings, as
confirmed by an expert with the National Center for Media Criminology, who was asked
to examine them by the euobserver.com. This news site received the recordings
from Makar.

 

Ukrainian police officers and prosecutors have already
formed a group to travel to the country where Makar is residing in order to
investigate the recording, said the National Police press service.
Investigators have also prepared an invitation to Ukraine for Makar to
participate as a protected witness in investigations.

 

Meanwhile, an Internal Affairs Ministry spokesman said
the recordings don’t contradict versions of the crime of Ukrainian
investigators, nor will they affect the prosecution of those currently accused
of the murder. “This information confirms the main version of the investigation
that our accused did not act independently, but fulfilled a certain criminal
idea of certain unidentified individuals,” spokesman Artem Shevchenko told the
BBC news agency.

 

Makar told the suspilne.media news site on Jan. 4 that
he is ready to offer testimony to Ukrainian prosecutors, noting that he offered
the police his evidence in December 2020. He said he has already been contacted
by Ukrainian security service agents and has agreed to cooperate. Also ready to
testify is Zaytsev, who is also residing in an unidentified EU country.

 

“If I published this information in 2016, when
Sheremet was assassinated, I might have helped in solving the crime, but I
would not be able to assist my Belarusian people today dealing with the
dictatorship that currently exists in the country. And I, probably, am ready to
sacrifice my life so that all this ends for Belarus, the dictatorship, and so
that Belarus becomes free,” Makar said.

 

Zenon Zawada: This is a
major development in the Sheremet murder. It was long considered to be a signal
to the public to warn against exposing corruption, but it was not known whether
it was ordered in Moscow or Kyiv. Now it turns out it might have been ordered
in Minsk, which would further add to the crimes that Lukashenko is accused of
(including those committed in suppressing the election protests of 2020).

 

Ukraine security service officers played some role in the
Sheremet murder, as revealed by journalists. So this development would confirm
that certain Ukrainian security service agents have been working in tandem with
their Belarusian counterparts, and probably with Russian agents as well.

 

This development will also worsen Ukrainian relations
with Belarus and further isolate the Lukashenko regime, which will likely
accuse Makar and Zaytsev of fabricating the evidence and committing treason
against Belarus. Ukraine’s role in the opposition to the Lukashenko regime will
be augmented in investigating and prosecuting this crime. We believe this could
also lead to Lukashenko being put on trial in Ukraine in absentia.