EUObserver: in 2012, the chairman of the KGB of Belarus discussed the murder of journalist Sheremet

In 2012, the current chairman of the KGB of Belarus, Vadim Zaitsev, discussed organizing the murder of journalist Pavel Sheremet, who died in 2016, and other Belarusian political emigrants. This is reported by the Belgian publication EUObserver, which received an audio recording of the conversation from Igor Makar, a former employee of the Almaz special unit of the Belarusian Interior Ministry, who moved abroad.

The publication notes that the conversation was secretly recorded on April 11, 2012 in the office of the chairman of the KGB during a meeting with members of the secret division of the Alpha special forces, created to fight political opponents of the Belarusian regime. Due to the low quality of the recording, EUObserver has not yet been able to confirm its authenticity, however, as emphasized by the publication, the voice of one of the participants in the conversation is very similar to the voice of Zaitsev, who headed the KGB from 2008 to 2012.

The publication, citing experts, writes that no traces of editing were found in the audio recording, but it was edited, most likely to hide the digital identifier of the recording device.

During the 24-minute recording, in addition to the murder of Sheremet, Zaitsev discussed the murder of Vyacheslav Dudkin, former employee of the central office of the main department for combating corruption and economic crimes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus, Oleg Alkaev, former head of the capital's pre-trial detention center No. 1, and Colonel Vladimir Borodach, former commander of the 5th separate special forces brigade .

“The president is waiting for these clear measures, and the committee has been instructed to deal with these matters ... But so, the methods by which we will have to understand where to drown someone, where to shoot whom is understandable. And how to provoke a natural explosion, how to provoke a natural fire, murder, and all other things…,” says the voice, which EUObserver identified as belonging to Zaitsev.

During the conversation, Zaitsev also said that "more than one and a half million dollars is on a special account" for informal operations, and Alexander Lukashenko would like to "see some results," the Belgian edition emphasizes.

“We need to work on Sheremet, who [got the damn thing]. Let's make a bookmark of some kind, and so on, so that this rat [damn] will not be collected at all [damn] either by arms or legs. Everything to be like a natural way, but it does not affect the minds of people in such a way, ”EUObserver quotes a voice similar to Zaitsev.

After the publication of the EUObserver investigation, the Ukrainian police confirmed that in December 2020 they received information "about the possible customers of the murder of Pavel Sheremet." The department clarified that we are talking about documents and audio recordings that were made in 2012.

Belarusian-Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed in Kyiv on July 20, 2016 as a result of a car explosion. He has been working in Ukraine since 2012: he hosted a program on Radio Vesti, published in Ukrayinska Pravda, and was also the editor-in-chief and founder of the Belarusian Partisan website, a media outlet in opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

In December 2019, the Ukrainian police announced the arrest of suspects in the murder and called their main motive a desire to destabilize the situation in the country.