Kremlin critic journo dies in Ukraine hail of bullets

A RUSSIAN journalist was shot and killed in the Ukrainian capital overnight, and the national police said he apparently was targeted because of his work.

Ukrainian police said Arkady Babchenko’s wife found him bleeding at their apartment building in Kiev and called an ambulance, but Babchenko (right) died on the way to hospital.

Police said he died of multiple gunshot wounds to his back. “The first and the most obvious version is his professional activities,” Kiev Police Chief Andriy Krishties chenko said in televised comments.

Harlem Desir, the media freedom representative at the Organisation for Security and co-operation in Europe, said he was “horrified” by Babchenko’s death.

“I call on Ukraine authoriwomen, to conduct immediate & full investigation,” he tweeted.

Babchenko, 41, served in the Russian army and fought during the first separatist war in Chechnya during the 1990s. He later became a journalist and worked as a military correspondent for several Russian media outlets.

Babchenko had been scathingly critical of the Kremlin’s policies in recent years, assailing Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, its support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine and the Russian campaign in Syria. Some of his articles outraged many Russians.