The journalists of the ICTV channel interviewed Oleksandr Shmereho, the Head of the Department on Health and Safety, Fire and Technical and Electrical Research of Kyiv Research Scientific Institute of Forensic Expertise, who has the qualification of a forensic expert in the field of “The exploration of explosive devices, traces and circumstances of the explosion”.
The topic of the conversation was the clarification of possible circumstances of the murder of Yevhen Konovalets, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. According to information from free sources, it is known that an attempt on the life of the OUN leader was committed on May 23, 1938, when he received a box of sweets from Pavlo Sudoplatov, an agent of the NKVD. The explosive mechanism was triggered, once the disguised box was in a horizontal position. The explosion took place in half an hour, which allowed the killer to escape from the scene of the crime.
Oleksandr Shmereho, the expert of the Kiev Research Institute of Forensic Expertise, explained that imaginary sweets could in fact be an explosive. Given a certain location, the explosion process would be transferred from one “sweet” to another unit at a speed of up to 4 thousand m / s (tolite). In order for the substance to react and the detonation process to take place, it needs a push, that is, an initial explosion of the initiating substance, the detonator.
“The process of detonation is the chemical transformation of an explosive substance, accompanied by the release of energy, which propagates through the substance in the form of a wave from one layer to the next with supersonic speed. That is, heat transfer is based not on heating, but on the compression of an explosive, says Oleksandr Shmereho, an expert of KFI. “There are only questions about how the so-called executive mechanism operated and what influence was initiated by the substance that interacted with the explosive and how the explosion itself took place”.
According to the forensic expert, the mechanism could be thought out carefully. Even after the box opening, a person would not suspect the disguise of explosives. Oleksandr Shmereho told about possible methods of launching the mechanism during the ICTV program. The video commentary will soon be available for viewing on YouTube channel of KFI.
