USA TODAY International Edition
Journalist says police faked death for sting
He apologizes to wife, friends for faux fatality
Arkady Babchenko, an anti-Kremlin journalist reported shot and killed in Kiev, Ukraine, showed up alive Wednesday at a news conference to explain that police faked his death to catch the man who ordered a hit on him.
To the applause and gasps of the media, Babchenko took the floor at the news conference in the Ukrainian capital and apologized to the friends and family — including his wife — who mourned for him and were unaware of the plan.
His wife found him outside their apartment entrance Tuesday evening “bleeding” from what she thought were gunshot wounds to his back. As part of the ruse, police claimed he died in an ambulance en route to the hospital.
“I want to say sorry for what you felt. I had to bury my friends and colleagues many times,” Babchenko said at the briefing at the offices of the Ukrainian Security Service, the Kyiv Post reported.
According to the Ukrainian Security Service, Russian special services allegedly ordered Babchenko killed and paid an unnamed Ukrainian citizen $40,000 to organize the killing.
The Ukrainian Security Service said he, in turn, paid a potential gunman $30,000 to carry out the hit, the newspaper reported.
When the security service learned of the plot, they recruited the gunman to work as a double agent to fake the shooting and arrest the organizer, who was apprehended.
The security service said, according to the Post, that Babchenko’s death was intended to be the first of about 30 planned killings of Russian citizens in Ukraine allegedly ordered by Russian special services.
Vasily Gritsak, head of the security service, said the elaborate scheme to fake Babchenko’s death had been in the works for a month.
Tuesday, Kiev and national police said Babchenko, one of Russia’s bestknown war reporters, had been shot three times in the back outside his apartment building and was found bleeding to death by his wife.
National Police spokesman Yaroslav Trakalo had told reporters that the purported killer had been waiting for Babchenko in the stairwell.
A police composite portrait even described the “killer” as a tall man with a gray beard, in his 40s. He was wearing a denim hat, jacket and jeans, according to the Post.
Babchenko, 41, served in the Russian army during two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, and hosts a news program on Ukraine’s ATR channel.
He assailed Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, its support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine and the Russian campaign in Syria.
Some of his articles and posts outraged many Russians. In one, he said he felt no regret about the deaths of Russian army choir members and others in a December 2016 plane crash. Some lawmakers have called for stripping Babchenko of his citizenship.