Ukraine sees destabilisation motive after car bomb kills journalist who felt threatened when in Russia

An award-winning journalist working for the online investigative website Ukrayinska Pravda was killed by a car bomb in central Kiev early on Wednesday morning, in what President Petro Poroshenko said was an attempt to destabilise Ukraine.

Pavel Sheremet, a Belarussian known for his criticism of his home country’s leadership and his friendship with the slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was driving to work in the car of the website’s owner when it was blown up.

The killing was a throwback to the days of violence against journalists that Ukraine, under a pro-Western leadership since the 2014 Maidan protests, hoped to have shed.

“It seems to me this was done with one aim in mind - to destabilise the situation in the country, possibly ahead of further events,” Poroshenko said in televised comments.

He has asked experts from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to join the murder investigation in the interests of “maximum transparency.”

In a statement, the US State Department expressed shock at the killing and said the FBI had begun to assist Ukrainian authorities in their investigations.