Ukraine admitted Wednesday it had staged the murder of anti-Kremlin journalist Arkady Babchenko in order to foil an attempt on his life by Russia, a stunning development in a case that had already provoked an outpouring of grief and a diplomatic spat.
Reporters gasped and applauded as Babchenko appeared alive and well at a press conference in Kiev, less than 24 hours after authorities said he had died from three gunshots to the back in the stairwell of his apartment building in a contract-style killing.
The head of Ukraine’s security service Vasyl Grytsak said at the press conference that the assassination was faked as part of a “special operation” to pre-empt a real plot to kill him.
“Thanks to this operation we were able to foil a cynical plot and document how the Russian security service was planning for this crime,” Grytsak said.
He announced that the authorities had arrested the alleged mastermind of the plot, saying a Ukrainian citizen named only by the initial G. had offered to pay a hitman $30,000 to carry out the killing after being recruited by Russian special forces.
Here's the moment Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and Kremlin critic reported to have been shot dead in Ukraine, showed up alive at a news conference https://t.co/GKNzm7m8Lg pic.twitter.com/3gFoNwzny7
— CNN International (@cnni) May 30, 2018
Put Wife Through ‘Hell’
Grytsak also thanked Babchenko and his family, who he said were in the loop about the secret operation. The reporter, however, apologised to his wife for putting her through “this hell she had to live through for three days…but there was no other option.”
News of the “death” of the prominent Russian war correspondent and former soldier set off a series of recriminations between Kiev and Moscow, and pictures and flowers were laid by mourners at the Russian embassy in Kiev.
Ukrainian officials led by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman accused Russia of being behind the killing of the Kremlin critic, a charge that Moscow batted back.
‘Pathetic Stunt’
After the truth of the reported assassination came to light, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was “great news” that Babchenko was alive. But on Twitter she slammed the “propagandistic effect” of the set-up.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the faked death as a “pathetic stunt.” And Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, a former colleague of Babchenko, also questioned the value of the operation.
“To me, it’s crossing a line big time. Babchenko is a journalist not a policeman, for Christ sake, and part of our job is trust, whatever Trump & Putin say about fake news,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m glad he is alive, but he undermined even further the credibility of journalists and the media,” he added.
‘Repeated Death Threats’
A number of Kremlin critics have been killed in Ukraine in recent years, with one gunned down on a Kiev street in broad daylight and another whose car exploded.
Babchenko fought in Russia’s two Chechen campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s before becoming a war correspondent and author. He repeatedly said he faced death threats.
He has contributed to a number of media outlets including top opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta and is an avid blogger, accusing Russian authorities of killing Kremlin critics and unleashing wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.
He wrote about his experience as a young soldier in the Chechen campaigns in a book published in English under the title “One Soldier’s War”.
Babchenko left Russia in February 2017 after receiving threats, living first in the Czech Republic, then in Israel, before moving to Kiev.
He has hosted a programme on the Crimean Tatar TV station ATR for the past year.
Babchenko made a name for himself with his poignant reportages from the frontlines, including the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people.
In recent years his increasingly bombastic posts pushed the boundaries of good taste and some of his colleagues and followers stopped reading him on Facebook.
