Putin critic who reported on MH17 shot dead in Kiev

kIeV: A prominent Russian journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin was shot dead in Ukraine where he had fled into exile following threats, police said.

Arkady Babchenko (pic), 41, died in an ambulance after his wife found him covered in blood in their home, police said, adding they suspected the murder was due to Babchenko’s professional activities.

Babchenko, a former soldier in the Chechen war who became one of Russia’s best-known war correspondents, had left his homeland fearing for his life after criticising Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria.

“The first and the most probable version is his professional activity,” Kiev police chief Andriy Kryshchenko said at a televised press briefing.

Babchenko’s wife is in a state of shock and police are unable to speak to her.

Ukrainian authorities released a drawing of the man they suspect is Babchenko’s assassin, around 40-45 years old, with a grey beard and wearing a cap.

“Babchenko’s house had run out of bread and he had gone to the shop to buy some,” Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and adviser to the interior minister, wrote on Facebook.

“He was gunned down on Tuesday by someone waiting for him in the stairwell at the entrance to his home. He was shot in the back several times.”

As a war reporter, Babchenko had written on Russia sending private military contractors to Syria and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 in eastern Ukraine.

In his last Facebook post before he was killed, Babchenko recalled an incident four years ago when he was meant to fly in a Ukrainian military helicopter in Ukraine’s embattled Donbass region.

The helicopter was overloaded and he was not permitted to fly. It was shot down and 14 people on board were killed.

“And I was lucky. Second birthday, it turns out,” he wrote. — Reuters