Weekly update

Foreign Policy writes that “on May 29, the news broke
that another Russian journalist critical of President Vladimir Putin’s regime
had been killed, gunned down outside his apartment in Kiev. Pictures
were circulated of his bloodied corpse, and the Ukrainian prime minister blamed “the
Russian totalitarian machine.” On May 30, the journalist stood up, alive and well, at a press conference to admit it had been a
sting operation by the Ukrainian security services to catch a Russian-paid
killer.”

As it later
became known, the “assassination” of journalist Arkady Babchenko was staged to
expose Russian agents.

Writing about
the Babchenko’s background, authors note: “He served as a soldier in both of
Russia’s brutal wars in Chechnya, and wrote a powerful memoir, One Soldier’s War, as a result. He went on to
become a war correspondent, covering Russia’s imperial incursions into Georgia
and then Ukraine, never hesitating to criticize the Kremlin and its aggressive
foreign policy. He was no stranger to scandal or threat, either, and in 2017
finally left Russia when a Facebook post of his expressing indifference over the
deaths of a military choir when a plane crashed on its way to Syria sparked a
nationalist firestorm of protest.”

He wrote an
article about the events of that time in the British newspaper The Guardian.

According to Vasyl Hrytsak, head of the Security Service
of Ukraine, there’s a proof that Russian intelligence agents had paid a
Ukrainian $40,000 to kill Babchenko.

Mark Galeotti argues: “Whether or not this was the best
tactic to use to keep Babchenko alive and catch those who were allegedly
seeking to have him killed is impossible to know at this stage. One could argue
that anything that achieves these goals is a success. However, this is not just
a law enforcement operation.”

Prepared by Marina Muradyan

https://acnis.am/en/weekly/20-2018-en