Kiev fakes reporter’s slaying as part of sting
Man arrested after ruse foils Moscow plot, officials say
KIEV, Ukraine — To the gasps, whoops and applause of stunned colleagues, Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko walked into a news conference Wednesday, less than a day after police in the Ukrainian capital said he had been assassinated.
Authorities said his death had been staged to foil a plot on his life by Moscow’s security services and one arrest was made. Russia denounced the faked killing as an outlandish attempt at defamation by its neighbor and foe.
Babchenko’s wife was unaware of the deception, and the Kremlin critic who fled to Ukraine 15 months ago apologized to her “for the hell she had to go through in the past two days. There was no choice there, either.”
Neither Babchenko nor Ukrainian Security Service chief Vasyl Gritsak gave details of the sting operation or how they made his wife believe he was dead.
Kiev police Chief Andriy Krishchenko had announced Babchenko’s death Tuesday, saying the journalist’s wife found him bleeding at their apartment building in Kiev but that he died en route to the hospital.
Lawmaker Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, said the assailant had waited on a staircase in the building and shot Babchenko, 41, in the back as he was going to buy bread.
Just hours before the shooting was reported, Babchenko wrote on Facebook that he considered the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, left, and journalist Arkady Babchenko appear at a news conference in Kiev. day a “second birthday” because it was the fourth anniversary of his missing a flight on a Ukrainian military helicopter that later was shot down in the conflict between Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country.
At the start of Wednesday’s news conference, Gritsak announced the journalist’s murder had been solved and called the day Babchenko’s “third birthday.” Babchenko walked into the room as other reporters gasped and exclaimed their surprise, then broke into applause.
“I’m still alive,”Babchenko said. Then he apologized for the deception. “I know that sickening feeling when you bury a colleague,” he added.
The news conference produced mixed emotions.
“I was shocked. But then a feeling of happiness rose up,” said Serhii Nuzhnenko, a freelance journalist.
Babchenko said Ukraine’s law enforcement had been aware of a contract on his head for two months. He said he was approached by the Ukrainian Security Service, or SBU, a month ago.
“The important thing is my life has been saved and other, bigger terrorist attacks have been thwarted,” he said.
Gritsak said investigators had identified a Ukrainian citizen who allegedly was paid $40,000 by the Russian security service to organize and carry out the hit. The Ukrainian man in turn allegedly hired an acquaintance to be the gunman, he added.
The suspected organizer of the alleged hit plot was detained Wednesday, Gritsak said, suggesting the bogus killing was aimed at flushing him out, and he showed a video of the arrest.
Killing Babchenko was part of a larger alleged plot by Russian security services, Gritsak said. The Ukrainian man also was supposed to procure weapons and explosives, including 300 AK-47 rifles and “hundreds of kilos of explosives,” to perpetrate acts of terror in Ukraine, he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the Ukrainian government was “fanning anti-Russian hysteria.”
Ukraine also faced a backlash from international journalism figures.
Reporters Without Borders director Christophe Deloire tweeted his “deepest indignation at the discovery of the manipulation of the Ukrainian secret services. It is always deeply dangerous for states to play with the facts.”