KIEV, Jan. 23 – A recently foiled plot to kill a Ukrainian lawmaker led investigators to believe the murder of a prominent journalist in Kiev last year was carried out by Russian security services, the lawmaker said Monday.

Anton Herashchenko, a People’s Front party lawmaker who also advises Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said an investigating team found similar features in the way the plot and the murder were directed, prepared and carried out.

“Today, based on the way the terrorist attack was prepared for my liquidation, the investigators believe with 99.9% certainty that the murder of the prominent journalist Pavel Sheremet in July 2016 was directed and carried out from the same terrorist center on the Russian territory,” Herashchenko said at a press conference in the interior ministry.

This is the first time a Ukrainian official linked with law enforcement has clearly connected the murder of Sheremet with the Russian special services. The investigation of the murder has been underway for six months, but no significant progress has been officially disclosed.

Sheremet, who worked for the investigative online website Ukrayinska Pravda, was killed by a car bomb in central Kiev early on July 20 2016. President Petro Poroshenko said the murder was an attempt to destabilize Ukraine.

Sheremet is a Belarussian who also had Russian citizenship, was known for his criticism of his home country's leadership and his friendship with the slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

Sheremet was driving to work in the car when it was blown up.

Vasyl Hrytsak, the head of the SBU security service of Ukraine, said January 21 the service foiled the plot to kill a Ukrainian lawmaker. The plot was apparently organized by a Russian operative who had hired two Ukrainians to carry out the attack.

The attack was supposed to be carried out by planting a bomb under Herashchenko’s car in the same way that was done to kill Sheremet, people familiar with the investigation said.

The murder of Sheremet 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.

Poroshenko asked experts from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to join the murder investigation in the interests of "maximum transparency."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reacting to Sheremet murder, said: "The murder of a Russian citizen and journalist in Ukraine is a very serious cause for concern in the Kremlin." (nr/ez)