CPJ To Release Report On Ukrainian Probe Into Sheremet’s Death
The Committee to Protect Journalists says it will release next week a report on the Ukrainian investigation into last year’s death of Pavel Sheremet, a Belarusian-born Russian journalist.
The New York-based group said it will release its report on July 12, nearly a year after Sheremet was killed by a car bomb in the Ukrainian capital.
No one has been arrested or prosecuted yet.
The CPJ report finds that Ukrainian authorities “offer no clear evidence to back their primary line of investigation of Russian involvement” in the killing, a statement said.
“This, coupled with errors including security footage being destroyed and delays in identifying and interviewing potential witnesses, suggests the need for an independent probe,” it added.
Sheremet was often critical of top political leaders and other government officials in his reporting.
In his last blog post before his assassination, Sheremet wrote that Ukrainian politicians who were former members of volunteer battalions that had fought separatists in Ukraine’s east could carry out a coup in Kyiv.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the bombing.
An update on that story we reported earlier...
Ukrainian Police Seize Servers Of Firm Linked To Global Cyberattack
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry says its cybercrime police department has prevented the second stage of a global cyberattack by seizing the servers of a small company.
Authorities on July 4 seized servers belonging to Intellect Service, the software developer of the Kyiv-based tax software firm M.E. Doc.
M.E. Doc was at the center of last week’s global outbreak of malicious software.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the servers of the M.E. Doc system in Kyiv had begun sending out and activating a computer virus at 1:40 p.m. local time on July 4.
Avakov said the attack was due to reach its peak at 4 p.m., but he said authorities stopped the attack before 3 p.m.
M.E. Doc was identified as "patient zero" of last week’s outbreak, which crippled computers at several multinational firms and knocked out cash machines, gas stations, and bank branches in Ukraine before spreading to other countries.
The company denies allegations that poor security helped seed the malware epidemic.
M.E. Doc is used by 80 percent of the companies in Ukraine to file taxes.
Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and Interfax-Ukraine