Ukraine officials helped a journalist fake his death to escape an alleged Russian assassination plot

According to accusations levied by the U.K. government in March, individuals acting under orders from the Russian government attempted to assassinate a former Russian military intelligence officer turned MI5 spy on U.K. soil earlier this year, drawing headlines the world over thanks to their brazen use of a Soviet era nerve agent in the attempt. The headlines and fervor seemed to indicate that such an assassination attempt must be out of the ordinary even for Putin’s aggressive regime, but the truth of the matter couldn’t be further from the truth. Russia, and Putin’s administration in particular, has a long history of assassinations on foreign soil — and as SOFREP has covered before, the victims are often journalists that have proven critical of the Kremlin.

On Tuesday, it appeared that another such assassination had occurred, when reports of the shooting death of another Russian journalist and prominent Putin critic emerged from Kiev. According to official statements from law enforcement officials at the time, Arkady Babchenko was shot in the back and had died in the ambulance while en route to the hospital. In an official statement that soon followed, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman implied that the Russian government had been involved in the assassination, adding that Babchenko had fled Russia last year out of fear for his life. After fleeing to Ukraine, where he found work as the host on a Crimean Tatar TV station, he continued to receive regular threats against him and his family from Russian individuals, though Babchenko himself has been quoted as saying he didn’t take those threats very seriously. It seems, however, that he likely should have.