YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
‘Assassinated’ Kremlin critic turns up alive ... and reveals shooting was faked to catch Russian killers
A PHOTO of his ‘body’ had already been released to the world’s media and mourners had laid flowers.
Then, hours after supposedly being shot dead, anti- Putin journalist Arkady Babchenko shocked the world – and his wife – by turning up alive and well.
The 41-year-old’s appearance at a news conference yesterday drew gasps as it was revealed his death was faked by the Ukrainians in an elaborate sting to foil an alleged Moscow-backed plot to assassinate him.
Mr Babchenko, himself a Russian, was reported to have been shot three times in the back in the stairwell of his apartment block in the Ukrainian capital Kiev after going out to buy bread from a nearby shop.
The former soldier turned war correspondent, who has six adopted children, fled Russia last year after receiving death threats. It followed a controversial Facebook post he made about the crash of a Russian military plane taking an army choir to Syria.
A photo purportedly of his dead body was released to Ukrainian media from law enforcement sources, as was an image and description of the ‘killer’. Well-wishers laid flowers
and hung pictures of Mr Babchenko outside the Russian embassy in Kiev. Vigils were being planned in Russia and Ukraine.
His wife Olga was left distraught after hearing the ‘shooting’ and finding him lying in a pool of blood.
He was said to have died in an ambulance en route to hospital on Tuesday.
But at a press conference less than 24 hours later Vasyl Gritsak, head of the Ukrainian security services, startled the watching media by inviting Mr Babchenko himself into the room. Mr Gritsak said investigators had identified a Ukrainian citizen who had been paid £30,000 by the Russians to organise the killing – with the help of an acquaintance who had fought in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine and had planned to pull the trigger.
Both men were arrested last night, with a YouTube video showing a plump, balding man believed to be the ringleader being handcuffed then led to a van. It was not immediately clear how faking Mr Babchenko’s death led to the suspects’ apprehension.
Ukraine’s general prosecutor, who appeared alongside Mr Babchenko, said it had been necessary to fake his death so the organisers of the plot to kill him would believe they had succeeded. Mr Babchenko shuffled in to the news conference looking relaxed, but pulled the occasional awkward face, and said: ‘I did my job. I’m still alive.’
He apologised to his wife, and everyone else who had mourned him, saying: ‘I have buried many friends and colleagues many times and I know the sickening feeling.
‘I am sorry you had to experience it. But there was no other way.’
He said he was told a month ago of a plot to kill him and had been in close contact with Ukraine’s security services ever since.
Mr Babchenko added: ‘ I was invited to take part in this special operation. I agreed and for a month we were preparing.’
Mr Babchenko said Russia had put pressure on the would-be assassins to carry out the planned hit. He said: ‘They pressed, very much – they were given three weeks to complete the order. Then they started to hurry and rush them.’
Mr Gritsak said a Ukrainian citizen – whose surname begins with G – was recruited to implement the murder plan. He added: ‘The Russian special services also set up another task for citizen G. It is an illegal purchase of weapons and ammunition from the funds of Russian special services with a view to laying stashes of weapons and ammunition in the central part of Ukraine.’
Mr Babchenko left Russia in February last year, living first in the Czech Republic, then in Israel, before moving to Kiev. He has hosted a programme on a Crimean TV station for the past year.
His departure from Russia followed the Facebook post he made about the military plane crash.
More than 90 people, including journalists and a popular humanitarian worker, were killed when the plane plunged into the Black Sea shortly after take-off. ‘I don’t feel any compassion or pity,’ wrote Mr Babchenko, who fought in Russia’s two Chechen campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s. ‘The Russian government called me its enemy and a national traitor. And so I absolutely don’t give a damn.’
At the time, state television urged Russians to sign a petition calling for him to be stripped of his citizenship, while pro-Kremlin politicians said he should be prosecuted. Mr Babchenko said he also received thousands of threats by email and telephone and that his home address was published online.
After leaving Russia, he said: ‘In Russia, if you think differently, if
‘I did my job – I’m still alive’
you are a dissident, then they can jail you at any moment, hit you over the head with a steel bar, or stick a syringe in you.’
Relations between Russia and Ukraine broke down after a popular uprising ousted a Kremlin-backed president in 2014. Russia then annexed Crimea and supported insurgents in eastern Ukraine.
Mr Babchenko’s ‘death’ was reminiscent of the assassination of prominent Kremlin critics including politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in 2015.
Last night the head of Russian TV channel RT posted a screen grab of Mr Babchenko at the press conference and wrote: ‘My cat, when it makes a mess under my kitchen table, has exactly the same face.’
The Russian foreign ministry claimed Ukraine was using the case for propaganda.