Journalist tells how he was ‘killed’
Ukrainian security forces used pig’s blood to fake Babchenko’s death
To mimic gore, they used make-up and pig’s blood. They shot bullet holes in one of his sweatshirts. And to top off Arkady Babchenko’s staged murder, they even took him to the morgue.
The journalist revealed on Thursday how Ukrainian security services faked his murder to thwart a contract hit allegedly arranged by Babchenko’s native Russia.
Police said on Tuesday night that Babchenko had been shot and killed in his apartment building. The next day, he showed up alive in front of journalists and authorities revealed that it all had been a ruse and said that the organiser of the planned assassination had been arrested.
At a news conference, Babchenko himself wasn’t clear on why the security services thought the elaborate deception was necessary. “They probably had their reasons. Maybe they wanted to collect proof that would be 100 per cent solid,” he told reporters.
One of Russia’s best-known war reporters and a vehement Kremlin critic, the 41-year-old Babchenko fled the country in February 2017 because of what he described as death threats. He said Ukrainian agents came to him about a month ago and said that Russian security services had put out an order for his slaying.
“I said: ‘Great. Why have you been waiting for a month?’” he recounted.
To make the staged murder look genuine, Babchenko said, security officers took his sweatshirt and shot holes in it. Babchenko said he put on the shirt and got smeared with pig’s blood. “I took a mouthful of it and spat it out,” he said. One of the officers also told him how to fall down to appear to have been genuinely shot.
His wife called an ambulance and he was taken to a hospital intensive care unit, where a forensic expert “documented” his death.