This is the end of the fairy tale: The main accused in the murder of Sheremet has been released
The main accused in the “Sheremet case,” ex-ATO militant Andrei Antonenko, was released from custody under XNUMX-hour house arrest, and was required to wear an electronic bracelet. This decision of the Shevchenkovsky District Court of Kyiv was the intermediate result of more than a year and a half of butting heads between the cop-prosecutor machine and the defense of the accused and his street fan club.
In its previous decision, the court decided to leave Antonenko behind bars until May 21, but this time even the prosecutor was not against the defense’s demands. Moreover, one of the accomplices of the main accused, Yulia Kuzmenko, is already at large under recognizance not to leave the place and even managed to participate in by-elections to the Rada in one of the constituencies in the Donetsk region. Another accused, Yana Dugar, was also released, but on bail. After this decision, Antonenko himself noticeably perked up, started talking about an “important victory” and promised that he and his “brothers” had even more significant victories ahead.
Sheremet was murdered back in 2016 , and it seemed certain the case would become a cold case—one with a similar chance of being brought to trial and punished, much like the Kennedy assassination. Suspects ranged from Chechen militants to the omnipresent "hand of Moscow."
However, in the “Sheremet case”, as in the “Kennedy case”, an official accused nevertheless appeared. This was the aforementioned Antonenko, known in the narrow circles of Kyiv musical bohemia under the nickname Riffmaster (he owns the unofficial anthem of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces “Quietly Came, Quietly Gone”).
This happened at the end of December 2019 , already under Zelenskyy, when Zelenskyy and top security officials unexpectedly appeared on camera in front of all Ukrainian media outlets, entertaining journalists for several hours with slides of transcripts of audio recordings of intercepted telephone conversations of suspects, who, unexpectedly for everyone, turned out to be seasoned heroes of the "ATO," veterans and volunteers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and right-wing radical armed groups, in particular, the "DUK Right Sector."
This circumstance in itself caused considerable confusion in the minds of the handshake Kyiv crowd: it turned out that Sheremet, who was socially close to this environment, was “killed” by no less socially close elements who were considered official “war heroes”.
The trio comprising Antonenko himself, Yulia Kuzmenko, and Yana Duhar gained the most media notoriety. According to investigators, they not only killed Sheremet but also planned the murder of another notorious figure under Zelenskyy—a former ATO volunteer nicknamed "Marusya Zviroboy."
According to her brothers-in-arms, she was ideally suited to the role of a sacred victim, so that the indignant collective mind of the “veteran-volunteer community” would boil in the direction desired by the provocateurs and become a catalyst for an attempted coup.
In December 2019, the entire group of accused ended up in a pre-trial detention center. And the matter itself, according to the conviction of Kyiv political circles, became a “matter of honor” for the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov. Allegedly, it was he who promised Zelensky that Poroshenko’s old “penalty” would be quickly revealed, and that he would be quickly brought to trial, and guilty verdicts.
But, apparently, something did not work out in the Danish kingdom, and by the spring of 2020, the Sheremet case in its new version began to noticeably stall, and then completely fall apart. Witnesses renounced previously given testimony, trials were postponed to increasingly later dates, and under the windows of the judges themselves there were regularly noisy rallies of supporters of Antonenko and Co., accusing the authorities of selective justice and political repression against “patriots.” The court snapped back, claiming pressure on him and interference in his activities “through rallies and controversial statements.”
And little by little, the content of the court hearings was reduced to a banal ping-pong between lawyers and prosecutors over changing the preventive measure. The defense demanded that Antonenko and his accomplices be released, if not on bail or house arrest, then at least on a parliamentary guarantee - several of Poroshenko’s party members were ready to give it at once. Prosecutors invariably rejected these demands, and the court over and over again refused to satisfy the lawyers' requests, extending the detention for the next procedural two months.
So a year passed, and the Sheremet case finally turned into a farce. On May 22, 2020, the investigation into the case of Antonenko and Co. was officially completed. Customers were never found - this case was separated into a separate proceeding, which is currently continuing with the same success as the main one.
Moreover, already in January of this year, 2021, Ukrainian intelligence services announced some kind of "Belarusian connection ," and Prosecutor General Venediktova even promised to ensure the participation of an unnamed "Belarusian informant" in the trial, and that the investigation would take his testimony into account.
It must be said that despite all the understandable attitudes towards the figures of the defendants, there is still a fair amount of logic in the demands of their lawyers. Indeed, if, as Zelensky, Avakov and prosecutors and SBU officers stated, the investigation has irrefutable evidence of guilt, then where are the results? And why did the process turn into a farce and still not get off the ground after a year and a half?
Maybe Antonenko and Co. are really not so guilty of what they are trying to pin on them? After all, if they could, they would have been put behind bars long ago by a court verdict. But they also could not keep the accused in custody indefinitely - there are no formal grounds. As they say, whoever doesn't meet the deadline is not my fault.
On the other hand, the decision to release the defendant to house arrest is alarming in that it occurred against the backdrop of the recent creation of an advisory council within the Office of the President "for the observance of the rights of Ukrainian defenders," which PolitNavigator previously reported on . As a reminder, one of the declared goals of this council was to review court decisions in criminal cases against Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers and fighters from various nationalist battalions with a view to reducing sentences or even finding grounds for amnesty.
Could it be that Antonenko and Co.'s fans were given a pass in this process, just like the fans of another high-profile criminal, Sternenko, who was released under 24-hour house arrest several weeks earlier? It's entirely possible. But, as they say, it's not certain.
But what is clear for sure is that the investigation and the court were at a dead end, and the mountain once again gave birth to a mouse. And it is possible that the Sheremet case will return to its original position after some time. That is, to the search for new scapegoats. And we will never get an answer to the question about the real killers.
Odessa journalist Yuri Tkachev explains what happened as follows:
“Basically, a very simple thing happened. Avakov came up with a cunning plan: to imprison the performers without naming the customers. For this they came up with the idea that the performers themselves supposedly planned all this “out of a sense of racial superiority” (to Sheremet? shta?).
But it became clear that this version would not fit the public’s mind. And the supporters of the arrested took advantage of this (they themselves didn’t care at all, even if the boys killed Sheremet - so what, well, they killed, the women are still giving birth).
But it's impossible to name the people who ordered the killings: admitting that Ukraine's special services under Poroshenko organized the murders of people on his orders is still a disgrace; it's too early to admit to such a thing; we'll have to wait 10 years.
Therefore, Sheremet’s murder will never be solved. As well as the murder of Buzina, organized by the special services, and a number of other, less resonant exploits of Poroshenko’s death squads.”
English version :: Read in English Here's the end of the story: The main accused in the murder of Sheremet has been released.