'Slain' reporter used make-up, pig's blood to fake death

Dissident Russian journalist ArkadyBabchenko said on Thursday he collaborated in a plot to fake hisown death because he feared being targeted for assassinationlike former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.

Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday night that Babchenko, aKremlin critic, had been gunned down in his apartment buildingin Kyiv. Pictures of his body in a pool of blood were publishedand officials suggested Russia was behind the assassination,something Moscow flatly denied.

A day later, Babchenko walked to the podium at a televisednews briefing about his death. Ukrainian security officials saidthey staged his apparent murder to thwart and expose a Russianplot to assassinate him.

What would you do in my place? ArkadyBabchenko

That drew criticism from some media defenders andcommentators who questioned whether the ruse and the falseoutpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia it generatedhad undermined credibility ofjournalism itself and ofKyiv,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 byUkrainian 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 saidthere is a hit out on you?" Babchenko said, saying concernsabout his life had to take precedence over worries aboutjournalistic ethics.

When Ukrainian security officials had approachedhim with information about a Russian plot to kill him, "my firstreaction was: 'To hell with you, I want to pack a bag anddisappear to the North Pole,'" he said.

"But then I realized, where do you hide? Skripal also triedto hide," he said.

Britain says Russia tried to kill Skripalwith a military-grade nerve agent in March, anallegation Moscow denies.

Babchenko said he now livesin a secure location and feelssafe for the time being.

How he did it

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

It also produced international condemnation, in part becauseseveral prominent Russians critical of Putin have been murderedin recent years, three of them in Ukraine. Opposition groups andhuman rights organizations say the Kremlin is behind thekillings. The Kremlin denies this.

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

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

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

"Once the gates of the morgue closed behind me, I wasresurrected," Babchenko said.

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"Then I watched the news and saw what a great guy I hadbeen," he said, referring to media tributes to him after hisdeath was widely reported.

Asked about his next steps, he said: "I plan to get somedecent sleep, maybe get drunk, and then wake up in two or threedays."

He quipped that nobody had shown him a letter from PresidentVladimir Putin ordering his murder, but that despite initialscepticism he now believed assertions from the Ukrainiansecurity service that he had been targeted in a Russian plot.

Suspect paid thousands

While saying he did not know why Russian authorities wouldwant to kill him, he said he personally loathed Putin, whom heaccused of starting several wars and being responsible forthousands of deaths.

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

The suspect,Borys Herman, the co-owner of a weaponsmanufacturer, said he had been contacted by someone in Russiaabout plans to kill Babchenko, but instead turned thisinformation over to the Ukrainian authorities and worked oncounterintelligence operations with them.

"I got a call from a longtime acquaintance who lives inMoscow, and in the process of communicating with him it turnedout that he works for the fund of Comrade Putin precisely toorchestrate destabilization in Ukraine," he said.

"We knew perfectly well that there would be no killing," hesaid, adding his work was done "only for the benefit ofUkraine."

The Kremlin, which had called accusations of Russianinvolvement "the height of cynicism," said on Thursday it wasglad Babchenko was alive, but found the staging of his deathstrange.

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