'Slain' reporter used make-up, pig's blood to fake death
Arkady Babchenko says he thought about running, but feared being found
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 Kyiv. Pictures of his body in a pool of blood were published and officials suggested Russia was behind the assassination, something Moscow flatly denied.
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.
What would you do in my place?— Arkady Babchenko
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 of journalism itself and of Kyiv, handing the Kremlin a propaganda gift in the process.
Babchenko hit back in a joint interview in Kyiv 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.
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,'" he said.
"But then I realized, where do you hide? Skripal also tried to hide," he said.
Britain says Russia tried to kill Skripal with a military-grade nerve agent in March, an allegation Moscow denies.
Babchenko said he now lives in a secure location and feels safe for the time being.
How he did it
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 favour 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.
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.
"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.
Suspect paid thousands
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.
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.
