Nowhere to hide from Russia, says Ukrainian journalist named on hit-list

Ukrainian journalist Matvey Ganapolsky speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kiev, Ukraine June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Olena Vasina and Sergei Karazy

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian journalist Matvei Ganapolsky sees no point in hiding abroad from Russians who might be trying to kill him, because if they want to find him, geography won’t stop them.

Ganapolsky is on a list of 47 people who Ukraine says Russia has targeted for assassination, a list which also includes Yevgeny Kiselyov, a veteran anchorman who became one of Russia’s best known television journalists in the 1990s.

Ukrainian authorities say they obtained the list after faking the murder of exiled Russian dissident Arkady Babchenko, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, in a ruse staged to flush out a genuine plot against him.

Ganapolsky, 64, was offered protection by the Ukrainian state after being told, after Babchenko’s sudden reappearance, that he too was a Russian target.

Fleeing abroad won’t help, he says, as the poisoning of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in March showed.

“The Skripals were poisoned in Great Britain,” Ganapolsky told Reuters in an interview.

“To send a man to kill somebody is a question of the price of a plane ticket. And, in low season, tickets are on sale with a discount. And moreover you have low-cost airlines nowadays. That’s why geography doesn’t matter in this case.”

Born in western Ukraine, Ganapolsky moved to Moscow in 1973 and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, made his name as a journalist with outspoken criticism of corruption in Russian law enforcement and restrictions on free speech.

He eventually came back to Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was given Ukrainian citizenship by President Petro Poroshenko.

He and Kiselyov came forward on Friday to say they had been contacted by the Ukrainian authorities after Babchenko’s faked murder.

Kiselyov, one of Russia’s most prominent liberal journalists of the post-Soviet era who co-founded Russia’s NTV, came to Ukraine in 2008 saying he had been squeezed out of the mainstream media.

“I despise Putin. I am not afraid of him,” Kiselyov told Reuters in an interview. “I am not saying that I do not sometimes feel fear for my life, or security of my family, my friends and relatives, but the feeling that I have is a feeling of … contempt.”

Kiselyov supports Ukraine in its standoff with Russia over Crimea and the outbreak of a Russian-backed separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

“If you are a political journalist, a commentator, and you take sides in this war, and I am taking Ukrainian side, well it involves certain risks,” he said.

Ukraine has received both praise and criticism for the stunt to fake Babchenko’s death. Some said the incident, which involved the phoney distribution of lurid details about his shooting, was a stunt in poor taste which had sparked a false outpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia.

For Ganapolsky, it is better to believe the threat is real than not believe it. “… Babchenko believed in it and maybe that was what saved his life,” he said.

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Journalist who faked death: I didn’t want to share Skripal’s fate

Russian dissident journalist Arkady Babchenko (C) greets acquaintances as he visits the office of the Crimean Tatar channel ATR in Kiev, Ukraine May 31, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Olena Vasina and Sergei Karazy

KIEV (Reuters) – Dissident Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko said on Thursday he collaborated in a plot to fake his own death because he feared being targeted for assassination like former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday night that Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, had been gunned down in his apartment building in Kiev. Pictures of his body in a pool of blood were published and officials suggested Russia was behind the assassination, something Moscow flatly denied.

Russian dissident journalist Arkady Babchenko (R) takes his portrait from deputy chief of the Crimean Tatar channel ATR Aider Muzhdabaiev as he visits the office of the channel in Kiev, Ukraine May 31, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Russian dissident journalist Arkady Babchenko (R) takes his portrait from deputy chief of the Crimean Tatar channel ATR Aider Muzhdabaiev as he visits the office of the channel in Kiev, Ukraine May 31, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

A day later, Babchenko walked to the podium at a televised news briefing about his death. Ukrainian security officials said they staged his apparent murder to thwart and expose a Russian plot to assassinate him.

That drew criticism from some media defenders and commentators who questioned whether the ruse and the false outpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia it generated had undermined credibility in journalism itself and in Kiev, handing the Kremlin a propaganda gift in the process.

Babchenko hit back in a joint interview in Kiev on Thursday, saying that he had gone along with the ruse, organized by Ukrainian security officials, because he feared for his life.

“Everyone who says this undermines trust in journalists: what would you do in my place, if they came to you and said there is a hit out on you?” Babchenko said, saying concerns about his life had to take precedence over worries about journalistic ethics.

Babchenko said he was exhausted after playing out the elaborate ruse. When Ukrainian security officials had approached him with information about a Russian plot to kill him, “my first reaction was: ‘To hell with you, I want to pack a bag and disappear to the North Pole.'”

“But then I realized, where do you hide? Skripal also tried to hide,” he said.

British authorities say that Skripal, a former Russian double agent, was poisoned in March with a military-grade nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury where he lived after leaving Russia in a spy swap.

Britain says Russia is culpable for the poisoning, an allegation Moscow denies.

Babchenko said he now lived in a secure location and felt safe for now.

His reported murder kindled a war of words between Ukraine and Russia, which have been at loggerheads since a popular revolt in Ukraine in 2014 toppled a Russian-backed government in favor of a pro-Western one.

It also produced international condemnation, in part because several prominent Russians critical of Putin have been murdered in recent years, three of them in Ukraine. Opposition groups and human rights organizations say the Kremlin is behind the killings. The Kremlin denies this.

RESURRECTED IN MORGUE

Babchenko disclosed for the first time details of how he had helped fake his own death.

He said that a make-up artist had come to his apartment to give him the appearance of a shooting victim, that he was given a T-shirt with bullet holes in it to wear, and that pig’s blood was poured over him.

He played dead, he said, while medical teams – who were in on the ruse – took him to hospital in an ambulance and then certified him as dead and sent him to a morgue.

“Once the gates of the morgue closed behind me, I was resurrected,” Babchenko said, saying he had then washed off the fake blood and dressed himself in a sheet.

“Then I watched the news and saw what a great guy I had been,” he said, referring to media tributes to him after his death was widely reported.

Asked about his next steps, he said: “I plan to get some decent sleep, maybe get drunk, and then wake up in two or three days.”

He quipped that nobody had shown him a letter from President Vladimir Putin ordering his murder, but that despite initial scepticism he now believed assertions from the Ukrainian security service that he had been targeted in a Russian plot.

While saying he did not know why Russian authorities would want to kill him, he said he personally loathed Putin, whom he accused of starting several wars and being responsible for thousands of deaths.

CREDIBILITY

Late on Thursday a Kiev court ordered the detention of a man who Ukrainian prosecutors say was involved in the plot and who had handed over $15,000 to a would-be killer.

The suspect Borys Herman, the co-owner of a weapons manufacturer, said he had been contacted by someone in Russia about plans to kill Babchenko but instead turned this information over to the Ukrainian authorities and worked on counterintelligence operations with them.

“I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives in Moscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turned out that he works for the fund of Comrade Putin precisely to orchestrate destabilization in Ukraine,” he said.

“We knew perfectly well that there would be no killing,” he said, adding his work was done “only for the benefit of Ukraine.”

The Kremlin, which had called accusations of Russian involvement “the height of cynicism”, said on Thursday it was glad Babchenko was alive, but found the staging of his death strange.

Ukrainian politicians robustly defended the ruse.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said he was surprised and shocked by “pseudo-moral” criticism from abroad, while Anton Gerashchenko, a prominent lawmaker and adviser to the minister, said the operation had been vital in order to trace the trail from the would-be assassin to his handlers.

They had to believe the plan to kill Babchenko had succeeded “and force them to take a number of actions that will be documented by the investigation,” he wrote on social media.

“After all, Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero Sherlock Holmes successfully used the method of staging his own death for the effective investigation of complex and intricate crimes. No matter how painful it was for his family and Dr. Watson.”

Some remained unconvinced.

“Relieved that Arkadiy #Babchenko is alive!” tweeted the office of Harlem Desir, media representative of the European security and rights watchdog OSCE. “(But) I deplore the decision to spread false information on the life of a journalist. It is the duty of the state to provide correct information to the public.”

A senior EU diplomat in Kiev said Ukraine’s actions were understandable, but hoped the authorities would provide more information about what had happened.

“No one is angry, unlike some in other places, but we hope(Ukraine) understands that international goodwill is a finite resource – even if they are right and it’s a war against a superior enemy,” the diplomat wrote to Reuters in a message.

(Additional reporting by Matthias Williams and Natalia Zinets; Writing by Christian Lowe/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Russian journalist Babchenko turns up alive after reported murder

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko (C), who was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital on May 29, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (R) and head of the state security service (SBU) Vasily Gritsak attend a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Matthias Williams and Andrew Osborn

KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters) – A dissident Russian journalist who was reported murdered in Kiev dramatically reappeared alive on Wednesday in the middle of a briefing about his own killing by the Ukrainian state security service.

Ukrainian authorities had said on Tuesday that Babchenko, a 41-year-old critic of President Vladimir Putin and of Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria, had been shot dead at his flat and that his wife had found him in a pool of blood.

His reported murder had triggered a war of words between Ukraine and Russia and sent shivers through the journalistic communities in both countries.

But on Wednesday, an emotional Babchenko appeared before reporters saying he had been part of a special Ukrainian operation to thwart a Russian attempt on his life and said he was fine.

“I would like to apologise for what you have all had to go through,” Babchenko, who looked on the verge of tears at times, told reporters.

“I’m sorry, but there was no other way of doing it. Separately, I want to apologise to my wife for the Hell that she has been through.”

He went on to thank the Ukrainian Security Service, the SBU, for saving his life and said the most important thing was that what he called other big acts of terror had been thwarted. He did not specify what those planned acts were.

The SBU said it had received information about the plot and had managed to prevent it.

Babchenko, a Putin critic, lived in the Ukrainian capital after receiving threats at home for saying he did not mourn the victims of a Russian military plane crash.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a social media posting late on Tuesday he was convinced what he called “the Russian totalitarian machine” had not forgiven Babchenko for what Groysman called his honesty.

The Kremlin described such allegations as part of an anti-Russian smear campaign.

“This is the height of cynicism against the backdrop of such a brutal murder. It is anti-Russian bluster instead of talking about the need to conduct a thorough, objective investigation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters before it was revealed that Babchenko was alive and well.

Babchenko sparked a backlash in Russia for his comments in a 2016 Facebook post on a Russian military plane crash. He said his comments had resulted in thousands of threats, his home address being published online and calls for him to be deported.

The plane, carrying 92 people, including dozens of Red Army Choir singers, dancers and orchestra members, crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria in December 2016, killing everyone on board.

(Additional reporting by Tom Balmforth and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, Olena Vasina and Natalia Zinets in Kiev; Editing by Christian Lowe)