A Russian journalist who had reportedly been shot dead in Kiev has turned up alive at a news conference in Ukraine. Russia had denied any involvement in the reported killing of anti-Kremlin reporter Arkady Babchenko. The head of Ukraine's security services says they faked his death to foil a real plot to kill him. </s> Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, who was reported killed in Kiev, shows up at a news conference in Ukraine. </s> This is a photo taken on Nov. 14, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine of Russian opposition journalist Arkady Babchenko. A Russian journalist harshly critical of the Kremlin was shot and killed in the Ukrainian capital Tuesday, May 29, 2018 and the national police said he apparently was targeted because of his work.

UPDATE: Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko is alive. The Ukrainian Security Service told a news conference on Wednesday the agency faked Babchenko's death to catch those who were trying to kill him. Read the story here.

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Below is the earlier story, based on fabricated information from Ukrainian authorities:

A Russian journalist harshly critical of the Kremlin was shot and killed in the Ukrainian capital Tuesday, and the national police said they are assuming he was targeted because of his work.

Ukrainian police said Arkady Babchenko's wife found him bleeding at their apartment building in Kiev and called an ambulance, but Babchenko died on the way to a hospital.

Police said he had multiple gunshot wounds on his back.

"The first and the most obvious version is his professional activities," Kiev Police Chief Andriy Krishchenko said in televised comments.

Harlem Desir, the media freedom representative at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he was "horrified" by Babchenko's death.

"I call on Ukraine authorities to conduct immediate & full investigation," he tweeted.

The Committee to Protect Journalists in New York said on Twitter that "Ukrainian authorities should conduct a swift and thorough investigation" into Babchenko's murder.

Babchenko, 41, was scathingly critical of the Kremlin's policies, assailing Moscow's annexation of Crimea, its support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine and the Russian campaign in Syria.

Ukrainian and Russian officials immediately traded finger-pointing over his death.

Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker who serves as an adviser to the interior minister, said on Facebook that investigators would be looking at "Russian spy agencies' efforts to get rid of those who are trying to tell the truth about what is going on in Russia and Ukraine."

Gerashchenko said Babchenko's killer was waiting for him on the staircase inside the journalist's building and shot him in the back as he was going out to buy bread.

Ukrainian police released a sketch of a suspect based on witness descriptions of a gray-bearded man in his 40s wearing a baseball cap. They said the gunman may have had accomplices.

In Moscow, officials and lawmakers criticized Ukrainian authorities for their alleged failure to protect journalists.

Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Kremlin Human Rights Council, said Babchenko's slaying was a "clear provocation." The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "bloody crimes and total impunity have become routine" in Ukraine.

Another renowned journalist, Pavel Sheremet, a native of Belarus who had worked for Russian media outlets in the past, was killed in a car bombing in central Kiev in July 2016. The case has remained unsolved.

"Ukraine is becoming the most dangerous country for reporters," Russian lawmaker Yevgeny Revenko said in remarks carried by the state RIA Novosti news agency.

In March 2017, renegade Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot and killed at the entrance of an upscale hotel in Kiev. Ukrainian prosecutors alleged that Voronenkov, who had toed the Kremlin line while serving as a Russian lawmaker but turned into a Kremlin critic after his 2016 move to Ukraine, was killed on orders from a Russian crime lord.

Babchenko served in the Russian army and fought during the first separatist war in Chechnya during the 1990s. He later became a journalist and worked as a military correspondent for several Russian media outlets. He also published several books based on his wartime experiences.

Some of his articles and posts outraged many Russians. In one, he said he felt no regret about the deaths of Russian army choir members and others from a December 2016 plane crash as they were heading to perform before Russian troops in Syria. Several Russian lawmakers even called for stripping Babchenko of his citizenship over the comment.

Babchenko left Russia in February 2017, saying he was receiving threats and concerned he might be jailed.

He moved to Kiev last fall, where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station, ATR.

Just hours before he was shot, Babchenko wrote on Facebook that he narrowly escaped death exactly four years ago when the Ukrainian military refused to take him on a helicopter heading to the front line in eastern Ukraine. The aircraft was shot down minutes later.

"I was lucky, it was my second birthday," he wrote Tuesday.

Copyright Associated Press </s> MOSCOW -- Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko turned up at a news conference in the Ukrainian capital Wednesday less than 24 hours after police reported he had been shot and killed at his Kiev apartment building. The country's security services said Babchenko's death was faked to foil a plot to take his life.

Ukrainian police said Tuesday that Babchenko, a strong critic of the Kremlin, was shot multiple times in the back Tuesday and found bleeding there by his wife. Authorities said they suspected he was killed because of his work.

Vasyl Gritsak, head of the Ukrainian Security Service, announced at a news conference Wednesday that the security agency and the police had solved Babchenko's slaying. He then startled everyone there by inviting the 41-year-old reporter into the room.

To the applause and gasps of the press, Babchenko took the floor and apologized to the friends and family who mourned for him and were unaware of the plan.

"I'm still alive," he said.

Before ushering Babchenko into the room, Gritsak said investigators had identified a Ukrainian citizen who had been recruited and paid $40,000 by the Russian security service to organize and carry out the killing. The unidentified Ukrainian man in turn hired an acquaintance who had fought in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine as the gunman.

Babchenko, one of Russia's best-known war reporters, fled the country in February 2017 after receiving death threats. He spoke and wrote about leaving the country because of the threats against him and his family. He said his home address was published online and the threats he received were made by phone, email and social media.

Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker who also moved to Ukraine, said Wednesday that Babchenko continued being threatened after he settled last fall in Kiev, where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station. Babchenko did not take the intimidation too seriously, according to Ponomarev.

Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine were topics on which the journalist was scathingly critical of the Kremlin.

This is a developing story and will be updated. </s> On Tuesday, the news spread quickly: Russian dissident journalist Arkady Babchenko had been shot three times just outside his apartment in Kiev, as he went out to buy bread. His wife had been in the bathroom; when she rushed out at the sound of gunshots, she found her husband bleeding to death. He died in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. On Facebook, Ukraine’s prime minister blamed Russia.

No one had trouble believing this story; no one even considered questioning it. It was gruesomely familiar, similar to the many horrifying stories we’d already heard from Russia, Ukraine, and other countries where journalists are killed for their reporting. The examples that sprang first to my mind were the 2006 assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot four times after she entered her Moscow apartment building, her groceries in hand; and the 2016 murder of Pavel Sheremet, a Belarusian journalist killed by a car bomb in central Kiev. The masterminds behind Politkovskaya’s murder were never identified, but it was revealed that she had been under surveillance by the FSB, the Russian security service, for at least two months before her murder. The Ukrainian government still hasn’t arrested or prosecuted anyone for Sheremet’s assassination, but investigative journalists discovered that an agent of the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, had been sitting outside Sheremet’s building the night the bomb was planted on his car. Ukraine blamed Russia, predictably, for Sheremet’s death, but some Ukrainians suspected a cover-up. Despite the rift in Russian-Ukrainian relations in recent years, the two countries often behave in strikingly similar ways.

A friend from Kiev happened to be staying with me on Tuesday, and I arrived home to find him in tears. He had been friendly with Babchenko and with many other journalists, including Russians who moved to Kiev after years of harassment and persecution. He spoke about his affection and admiration for Babchenko, and about the fear he felt for his other journalist friends. Would they be killed, too? We agreed that it was unlikely that the Ukrainian government would find Babchenko’s killer. If anyone would discover the truth, it would be journalists. And by investigating the killing, they might very well be risking their own lives.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter were surging with anguish. Babchenko had been known for his refusal to express sorrow over the deaths of people who supported Putin and his administration. Most notoriously, when a plane crash killed Russia’s Red Army choir en route to Syria, Babchenko proclaimed his lack of sympathy, given Russia’s military aggression; the backlash (including from the government) led to his flight to Ukraine. But most of the social media posts I saw after the announcement of his death forgave him his trespasses and remembered only his better qualities (which appear to be numerous). It was particularly agonising to read the statements of Babchenko’s fellow journalists, who had already seen too many colleagues killed, and who must have been reminded of the threat to their own lives. People started making plans to honour his memory, to help his widow and adopted children, and to pressure the Ukrainian government to find his killer.

The next morning, I began to see comments on social media that said Babchenko was alive: “Babchenko lives”. This phrase is often used metaphorically, for example in graffiti celebrating dead Russian rock stars, and I assumed this was the case here as well. But then I saw footage from an SBU press conference, with a reveal worthy of reality TV: Babchenko sauntered in unexpectedly, to the astonishment and applause of the audience. The murder had been staged, supposedly as a way of catching Russian operatives plotting Babchenko’s assassination. Someone is reportedly in custody, though it has not yet been explained how this was accomplished or why exactly it was necessary to fake the murder. In his remarks, Babchenko apologised to his wife.

For me, for my visiting friend, and for many others, relief soon gave way to doubts about the ethics and the wisdom of this “special operation”. On Facebook, the Ukrainian MP Anton Herashchenko tried to explain why it had been necessary to disseminate an artist’s sketch of a supposed killer “with a Caucasian appearance”. (Some Russian assassinations have been connected with Chechens, but immigrants from the Caucasus are also subject to brutal discrimination; Ukraine has an increasingly serious problem of ultranationalist attacks on ethnic and other minorities, as well as journalists.) Herashchenko admitted that the hoax caused pain to many – but after all, he wrote, Sherlock Holmes often staged his own death in order to solve crimes, causing pain to his loved ones and to Doctor Watson. The line between truth and fiction had become hopelessly blurred; it was all just stories. The literary reference reminded me of one of the more ludicrous Russian conspiracy theories about the attack on flight MH17: that the passengers were dead before the plane took off, as seen in the BBC series Sherlock.

In its endless one-upmanship against Russia, Ukraine has once again cut off its nose to spite its face, severely undermining its own credibility and that of journalists. This stunt also seems a gratuitous blow to what is left of public sincerity, compassion, and trust. Next time a journalist is killed in Ukraine (and, unfortunately, it seems certain that there will be a next time), even the least cynical observers, the kinds of people who wept all night over Babchenko’s supposed death, will likely wonder whether they should believe in a tragic death until they’ve inspected the corpse themselves. Conspiracy theories thrive on this kind of corrosive scepticism. Some Ukrainian commentators have been crowing that no one will be able to smear the Ukrainian security services after this brilliant victory. In fact, the Ukrainian authorities have done a magnificent job of smearing themselves.
• Sophie Pinkham is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine </s> KIEV (Reuters) - A prominent Russian journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin was shot dead in Ukraine where he had fled into exile following threats, police said on Tuesday.

Arkady Babchenko, 41, died of his wounds in an ambulance after his wife found him covered in his blood in their home, police said, adding they suspected the murder was due to Babchenko’s professional activities.

Babchenko, a former soldier in the Chechen war who became one of Russia’s best-known war correspondents, had left his homeland fearing for his life after criticizing Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria.

He had been denounced by pro-government politicians in Russia over comments on social media about the Russian bombing of Aleppo in Syria’s war, and over his characterization of Russia as an aggressor toward Ukraine.

“The first and the most probable version is his professional activity,” Kiev police chief Andriy Kryshchenko said at a televised press briefing when asked what police suspected lay behind the murder.

Babchenko’s wife is in a state of shock and police are unable to speak to her, he said. Ukrainian authorities released a drawing of the man they suspect is Babchenko’s assassin, around 40-45 years old, with a grey beard and wearing a cap.

Two years ago Pavel Sheremet, a Belarussian journalist known for his criticism of his home country’s leadership and his friendship with the slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was blown up in a car bomb in central Kiev.

FILE PHOTO: Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko attends an interview in Kiev, Ukraine November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Vitalii Nosach

“Putin’s regime takes aim at those who cannot be broken or intimidated,” Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and adviser to the interior minister, wrote on Facebook.

Babchenko’s house had run out of bread and he had gone to the shops to buy some, Gerashchenko said. He was gunned down on Tuesday by someone waiting for him in the stairwell at the entrance to his home. He was shot him in the back several times.

“Today in Kiev on the threshold of the apartment where he lived, famous Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was shot and killed, a consistent opponent of the Putin regime and a friend of Ukraine.”

In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said journalists were being killed with impunity in Ukraine.

“Bloody crimes and total impunity have become routine for the Kiev regime. We demand that the Ukrainian authorities make every effort to promptly investigate,” it said on Facebook.

The Investigative Committee of Russia said it had opened a criminal case into Babchenko’s death.

Babchenko took part in the war in Chechnya as a soldier. He then he became a war reporter for several Russian newspapers. On Feb. 27 last year, he wrote on Facebook that he had left Russia.

Slideshow (11 Images)

He reported on Russia sending private military contractors to Syria and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 in July 2014 in eastern Ukraine, for which investigators last week held the Russian state responsible. Russian authorities again denied any connection with the plane’s downing over an area of Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatist forces.

In his last Facebook post before he was killed, Babchenko recalled an incident four years ago when he was meant to fly in a Ukrainian military helicopter in Ukraine’s embattled Donbass region. The helicopter was overloaded and he was not permitted to fly. It was shot down and 14 people on board were killed.

“And I was lucky. Second birthday, it turns out,” he wrote. </s> Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko turned up at a news conference in the Ukrainian capital Wednesday less than 24 hours after police reported he had been shot and killed at his Kiev apartment building. The country's security services said Babchenko's death was faked to foil a plot to take his life.

Ukrainian police said Tuesday that Babchenko, a strong critic of the Kremlin, was shot multiple times in the back Tuesday and found bleeding there by his wife. Authorities said they suspected he was killed because of his work.

Vasyl Gritsak, head of the Ukrainian Security Service, announced at a news conference Wednesday that the security agency and the police had solved Babchenko's slaying. He then startled everyone there by inviting the 41-year-old reporter into the room.

To the applause and gasps of the press, Babchenko took the floor and apologized to the friends and family who mourned for him and were unaware of the plan.

"I'm still alive," he said.

Before ushering Babchenko into the room, Gritsak said investigators had identified a Ukrainian citizen who had been recruited and paid $40,000 by the Russian security service to organize and carry out the killing. The unidentified Ukrainian man in turn hired an acquaintance who had fought in the separatist war in eastern Ukraine as the gunman.

Babchenko, one of Russia's best-known war reporters, fled the country in February 2017 after receiving death threats. He spoke and wrote about leaving the country because of the threats against him and his family.. He said his home address was published online and the threats he received were made by phone, email and social media.

Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker who also moved to Ukraine, said Wednesday that Babchenko continued being threatened after he settled last fall in Kiev, where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station. Babchenko did not take the intimidation too seriously, according to Ponomarev.

Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine were topics on which the journalist was scathingly critical of the Kremlin.

Ayse Wieting in Istanbul and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Back from the dead?

Ukraine staged the murder of a Russian dissident journalist in Kiev on Tuesday in what it said was a sting operation to foil a Russian assassination plot.

Arkady Babchenko sent shock waves around the world when he arrived at a news conference on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after being reported dead.

Ukrainian security chief Vasyl Hrytsak said a sting had been set up to catch hitmen paid by Russian forces.

Russia described events in Kiev as an "anti-Russian provocation".

Ukrainian police say they made one arrest.

Babchenko's wife said on Tuesday she had found her husband at the entrance to their apartment block with bullet wounds in his back, and he was reported to have died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

That story was widely reported by media around the world, until Wednesday's sudden and extraordinary development.

There were gasps and applause at the press conference in Kiev as Babchenko entered the room. He thanked the Ukrainian security services for saving his life and said he had had no choice but to take part in the sting.

"I did my job," he said. " I'm still alive."

"I have buried many friends and colleagues many times and I know the sickening feeling," he added. "I am sorry you had to experience it. But there was no other way."

Hours after the news broke, Babchenko tweeted to say he would "die at 96" after "dancing on Putin's grave", referring to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

Babchenko fled Russia in 2017 after writing a Facebook post (in Russian) about a crashed Tu-154 transport plane, which went into the Black Sea while carrying a Red Army choir to Syria.

He said this Facebook post, in which he described Russia as an "aggressor", had led to death threats and abuse from the Russian state.

What do we know about the operation?

Babchenko said he had been informed a month ago about an alleged Russian plot to kill him. He said he had agreed to co-operate with a counter-operation and had been in constant contact with Ukrainian security services over the course of the past month.

He added that he thought security services had been planning the operation for up to two months.

Mr Hrytsak said the operation had begun after Ukrainian security services were informed about a Russian plot to kill the journalist.

He alleged that Russian security forces had recruited a Ukrainian citizen to find hitmen within Ukraine. He said the citizen had approached several acquaintances, including war veterans, offering $30,000 (£22,600) for the contract killing, one of whom revealed the plot to the security services.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Babchenko covering the Maidan protests in Kiev in 2014

The security services then informed Babchenko, apparently determining that the only way to reveal the plotters was to stage a fake hit.

Babchenko said that his wife Olga and his children had been aware of the plan but he publicly apologised to her at the press conference. "I am terribly sorry," he said, "but there were no other options."

Mr Hrytsak said the man detained by police was the Ukrainian who had allegedly attempted to find a hitman.

The reaction

Russia's foreign ministry condemned the staged assassination, calling it "obviously yet another anti-Russian provocation".

Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the operation as "a masquerade" done for "propagandistic effect". She added that Russia was happy that Babchenko was alive, saying: "I wish it were always like that."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the country would offer protection to Babchenko. "It is unlikely that Moscow will calm down," he said on Twitter. "I've given an order to provide Arkady and his family with protection."

The Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty network posted video footage of Babchenko's colleagues reacting to news that he was alive.

But many expressed reservations over the tactics used by the Ukrainian security services. Campaign group Reporters Without Borders condemned the operation as a "pathetic stunt".

"It is pathetic and regrettable that the Ukrainian police have played with the truth, whatever their motive," the head of the organisation, Christophe Deloire, told AFP news agency.

The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded that the authorities explain "what necessitated the extreme measure", describing it in a tweet as an "unprecedented situation".

Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, a former colleague of Babchenko, said the sting had "crossed a line big time".

"Babchenko is a journalist not a policeman, for Christ sake, and part of our job is trust, whatever Trump & Putin say about fake news," he wrote on Twitter. "I'm glad he is alive, but he undermined even further the credibility of journalists and the media."

Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist and friend of Babchenko, told the BBC he felt "anger and relief in equal measure".

“From being incredibly gloomy and sad yesterday... to frankly anger today, we’ve all been hoodwinked and made to believe our friend died."

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Friend of Babchenko: "We’ve all been hoodwinked"

A glaring example of 'fake news'

Frank Gardner, BBC Security Correspondent

There can be few more glaring examples of 'fake news' than the deliberate misreporting by a sovereign government of a prominent journalist's death.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine are at an all-time low, following Moscow's annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, and Russia has been accused of several recent deaths of Kremlin critics in Ukraine.

But this staged non-death will inevitably muddy the waters. Russia already denies any involvement in the attempted assassination of its former spy Sergei Skripal in the UK city of Salisbury in March, calling it fake news.

It will now likely seize on this deception in Kiev to strengthen its claim in that case, and in others.

Deaths in Kiev

Kiev has in recent years seen a number of deadly attacks on high-profile figures, including journalists and politicians. Most of them were vocal critics of the Kremlin.

The leading Belarusian journalist and Kremlin critic, Pavel Sheremet, was killed by a car bomb in Kiev in July 2016.

Another car bomb killed Ukrainian military intelligence officer Col Maxim Shapoval in June 2017 in what the Ukrainian authorities called a terrorist act.

In March of the same year, former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov was shot dead outside a hotel in Kiev. </s> Ukraine Intelligence Agents Say They Staged Killing Of Russian Journalist, Who Is Alive

Ukraine intelligence agents say they staged the apparent murder of a Russian journalist in Kiev in an attempt to trap a real assassin.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. The popular misquote of Mark Twain seems appropriate for our next story. Those are words Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko could have used today. NPR's Lucian Kim reports on how the journalist's supposed murder has once again pitted Ukraine against its Russian neighbor.

LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: The news broke late Tuesday evening in Kiev. Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist and vocal critic of the Kremlin, had been shot dead at his apartment in the Ukrainian capital.

KIM: The TV news report sounded horrible. Babchenko, who had fled Russia after being threatened by Russian lawmakers, had been murdered in cold blood after returning home after buying a loaf of bread. Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman pinned responsibility for the murder on what he called the Russian totalitarian machine, and colleagues poured out their emotions at interviews and on social media.

KIM: Yevgenia Albats, one of Babchenko's former editors, told a Moscow radio station that now every Russian journalist was in mortal danger. A familiar blame game began, with the Kremlin saying the Ukrainians had barely begun their investigation but were already pointing the finger at Moscow.

KIM: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called Babchenko's death a tragedy. He said accusations against Russia were groundless, just like the claims that Russia had poisoned a former Russian double agent in England or had been involved in the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane over eastern Ukraine. Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, accused the Ukrainians of the height of cynicism. And Russian investigators even offered their services to their Ukrainian colleagues, since Babchenko was a Russian citizen.

In fact, the Ukrainian authorities don't exactly have a great record in clearing up contract killings. Two years ago, Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet died in a car bombing on a Kiev street, and the case still hasn't been solved. This time, however, the Ukraine police produced a sketch of Babchenko's killer in no time. And the SBU, Ukraine's security agency, scheduled a press conference on the murder for Wednesday. Journalists who showed up were stunned when SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak suddenly introduced a supposed victim, Arkady Babchenko, alive and unhurt.

Babchenko's murder had been faked, Hrytsak said, to uncover an actual plot against him by Russian intelligence. Babchenko said the sting operation was so secret that not even his own wife knew about it.

KIM: Babchenko apologized to his wife, Olga, for the hell he had put her through but said he didn't have an option. Reaction to the news has been mixed. Some of Babchenko's colleagues said they were relieved he was alive but concerned that he had damaged the credibility of their profession. Reporters Without Borders expressed its deepest indignation with the Ukrainian Security Service for using a journalist to play with the facts. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.
It is reported that Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko is shot dead near his home in Kiev, Ukraine. The day after, the event is revealed by the Ukrainian Security Service to have been staged as part of an operation to catch those who were trying to kill him.