Sheremet case: Ankle monitor removed from suspect Kuzmenko

Photo from UNIAN

A GPS-tracking ankle monitor has been removed from volunteer and pediatric surgeon Yulia Kuzmenko, who is suspected of complicity in the murder of Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv in the summer of 2016.

"Police representatives complied with the ruling issued by Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky District Court and removed an ankle monitor from Yulia Kuzmenko," her lawyer Taras Bezpalyy wrote on Facebook on August 26, 2020.

Read alsoSheremet murder probe: Court extends custody term for Andrii "Riffmaster" AntonenkoSheremet case: background

• Sheremet was assassinated in a car blast in the center of Kyiv on the morning of July 20, 2016.
• On December 12, 2019, police said they suspected five persons of complicity in the crime: former Donbas war volunteer and musician Andrii Antonenko, army volunteer and pediatric surgeon Yulia Kuzmenko (nom de guerre "Lysa," or "Fox"), a nurse with a paratrooper unit Yana Duhar, and a family couple of army volunteers Inna Hryshchenko ("Puma") and Vladyslav Hryshchenko ("Bucha").
• Law enforcers claim that the Sheremet assassination aimed to destabilize social and political situation in Ukraine. Antonenko, Kuzmenko, and Duhar were charged on December 12, 2019.
• Ukrainian investigative journalists with the Slidstvo.info project said they had found the forensic report used in the probe into the murder of Sheremet far from being unambiguous, while evidence presented by the police was dubbed unconvincing. Many Ukrainian public activists consider the proof collected by investigators inconsistent.
• According to the head of the Sense Consulting law firm Leonid Maslov, whose lawyers represent Antonenko, the charge papers were amended to remove such phrasing as "ultra-nationalist ideas" and "greatness of the Aryan race". The updated version says "unidentified persons driven by personal motives, decided to create a highly reverberating event with the aim of further provoking numerous protests." These unidentified persons "involved" Antonenko, Duhar, and Kuzmenko.
• On August 11, pretrial restrictions for another suspect in the case, volunteer and pediatrician Yulia Kuzmenko, were eased from custody remand to house arrest.