YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Well-known Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet has died in downtown Kiev when the car he was driving blew up minutes after it started. The vehicle belonged to his employer, the head of Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper, RT reported.

The killing of the journalist in Kiev is murder, with a bomb planted in the car he was in, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office has said.

“No doubt the blast was caused by an explosive device implanted by malefactors. Evidently, the bomb had either a frequency-induction fuse or clock-operated bomb,” Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian MP and aide to the interior minister, told 112 Ukraine channel.

The explosion occurred at about 7:45am, after Sheremet got into the car, started the engine and drove several dozen meters. He was killed instantly. The vehicle has completely burnt out.

The vehicle belonged to Alyona Pritula, the founder and chief editor of Ukrainskaya Pravda media outlet. She was not inside the vehicle at the moment of explosion.

President Petro Poroshenko offered his condolences in a Twitter post, saying he is "shocked"and "has no other words." He added that he personally knew the journalist.

Sheremet was a well-known Russian journalist and political analyst specializing in relations between Russia and Ukraine, as well as developments in former Soviet republics. Over the last five years, Sheremet lived and worked in Ukraine, employed by the UP.

The media company was founded in 2000 by Pritula and Georgy Gongadze, a Ukrainian journalist of Georgian origin who was assassinated on September 17, 2000.