KYIV/MINSK. Jan 19 (Interfax) - Igor Makar, a former member of Belarusian special taskforce Almaz, has said that he has given testimony to Ukrainian investigators in Kyiv concerning the assassination of journalist Pavel Sheremet.
"When I came to Ukraine, I was met by the special services. I was guarded 24 hours a day. In my view, I have provided enough reasons to establish that the Belarusian special services were involved in ordering Pavel Sheremet's assassination," Radio Liberty quoted Makar as saying in an interview.
"After the publication of my information on what happened at the office of KGB [Belarusian State Security Service] chief [Vadim] Zaitsev in 2012, Ukrainian diplomats got in touch with me to discuss cooperation in solving Pavel Sheremet's assassination. At the request of the Ukrainian National Police Directorate's chief, they issued a Ukrainian visa to me and asked me to travel to Ukraine to take part in the investigation," Makar said.
"I provided the Ukrainian side with much more information than the media have published," he said.
"In my personal opinion, by confronting a number of facts and speaking to Ukrainian investigators, one may say that [Belarusian President] Alexander Lukashenko hated Pavel Sheremet. All of this together could have served as a reason for his elimination, and this was done as a demonstrative killing," Makar said.
No comments on the matter have so far been made available by the Ukrainian National Police.
At the same time, Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoly Glaz said in a commentary published on the Foreign Ministry's website on Tuesday that Minsk is willing to provide Kyiv with evidence proving that the person who circulated an audio recording in which Sheremet's assassination is supposedly discussed is a fraudster.
"We have solid evidence, including an audio recording, that unambiguously demonstrates this operator's clear fraudulent objectives," Glaz said.
Belarus has shared the relevant information with Poland, Lithuania, and Germany, Glaz said. "If we receive a request from Ukraine, we stand ready to consider that, as well," he said.
The online publication Ukrainska Pravda said on January 4, 2021, citing the audio recording published previously and the Belgian-based publication EUobserver, that the Belarusian special services were behind the preparations for killing Sheremet. As follows from the recording of remarks the publication attributed to Zaitsev, chief of the Belarusian KGB in 2008-2012, the Belarusian special services discussed the use of explosives to kill Sheremet, which was actually done four years later.
Sheremet was killed when a car he was driving blew up in the center of Kyiv on July 20, 2016. The Ukrainian investigation has indicted three people for playing a role in Sheremet's assassination, namely military nurse Yana Duhar, volunteer and children's cardiovascular surgeon Yulia Kuzmenko, and musician and Donbas war veteran Andriy Antonenko. The pretrial investigation against the suspects was completed on May 22, 2020. None of the three has admitted any wrongdoing.