International rights groups are calling for a swift investigation into the death of Pavel Sheremet.
Journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed on Wednesday when a car bomb placed under the car he was driving exploded on his way to work in Kiev, Ukraine.
Sheremet was born in Belarus but was a Russian citizen who worked in Moscow for years before leaving Russian Public Television (ORT) in 2014 over Russia's annexation of Crimea. An aide to Ukraine's interior minister was quoted in the Guardian saying that "investigators suspected a homemade explosive device of 400-600 grams of TNT equivalent that was possibly detonated remotely."
Sergei Supinsky / AFP / Getty Images
Sheremet had been targeted for his work before, having been jailed for illegally crossing into Lithuania and back from his native Belarus in 1997 and beaten and hospitalized in Minsk in 2004.
After leaving Russia in 2014, Sheremet had been working for Ukrainska Pravda, a digital newspaper. He'd also kept up his criticism of Russia's policies towards Ukraine, saying that he believed that open war between the two countries was inevitable.
Viktor Drachev / AFP / Getty Images
Rights groups swiftly condemned his murder.
"The use of a car bomb is chilling evidence that Shermet and press freedom were likely not accidental targets," Robert Herman, vice president for emergency assistance programs and multilateral advocacy at Freedom House, said in a statement.
Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters
Human Rights Watch called his death a "huge loss and striking reminder that the government needs to respond in the most serious way to threats to media freedom in Ukraine."
Sergei Supinsky / AFP / Getty Images
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