20 July: Firefighters examine the wreckage of a burned car in Kyiv after the murder of prominent Belarusian-born journalist Pavel Sheremet. (c) Efrem Lukatsky / AP / Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Once again, Ukrainians are discussing the possibility of a military coup in their country. This has been more than idle talk or scaremongering since late June, after Sergiy Leschenko, an investigative journalist and politician, claimed that Ukraine’s interior minister Arsen Avakov could use forces under his control to seize power. Here, Leschenko referred to the far-right Azov paramilitary regiment, which, given its position as Avavkov’s “praetorian guard” and professional work with the media, is a frequent suspect in discussions of coups in Ukraine.
Several other Ukrainian MPs echoed Leschenko’s warning, and this chorus has been amplified by events across the Black Sea. The Turkish military’s attempt to overthrow president Erdogan instantly became a hot topic in Ukraine’s public discourse, with support split between the military and the Turkish president. Azov’s muscle flexing and events in Turkey were symbolically united several days later in the figure of Pavel Sheremet, the prominent journalist who was killed in a car bomb in Kyiv on 20 July.
Indeed, Sheremet, a critic of the authorities, dedicated his last text to the possibility of a coup in Ukraine — though here he defended Azov, warning against Ukraine’s other paramilitary detachments instead. As Erdogan’s counter-coup gathers momentum, we should ask: to what extent are these fears grounded in reality?
