KYIV. Dec 13 (Interfax) - Three people, namely, military nurse Yana Duhar, volunteer and children's doctor Yulia Kuzmenko, and musician and Donbas war veteran Andriy Antonenko, have been notified of being suspects in the killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet, and all of them have been detained, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said.
"Suspicion under Ukrainian Criminal Code Article 115 (premeditated murder), investigative procedures, and searches are underway," Interior Ministry spokesperson Artem Shevchenko told Interfax on Thursday.
The other two people detained in the same case, namely, the spouses Vladyslav and Inna Hryshchenko, are currently in custody in a different case and have not yet been named as suspects in Sheremet's assassination, Shevchenko said.
"The other two people, the Hryshchenko couple, have not yet been notified of being suspected in this case, and they are in custody in a case dealing with an attempt on the life of a businessman in the Ivano-Frankivsk region," he said.
A car belonging to the head of the online publication Ukrayinska Pravda, Olena Prytula, was blown up while Sheremet was driving it in central Kyiv early on July 20, 2016. The journalist died at the scene soon after the explosion.
Earlier on Thursday, police conducted a number of searches and declared several people suspects in Sheremet's assassination. Speaking later at a news briefing, National Police deputy chief and criminal police chief Yevhen Koval said Duhar, Kuzmenko, Antonenko, and the Hryshchenko couple were reasonably suspected of a role in the crime.
Koval said the investigation had established that the principal motive behind Sheremet's assassination was an attempt to destabilize the sociopolitical situation in the country.