A journalist critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin was shot dead at his home in Kiev, the third assassination in two years of a Kremlin foe in Ukraine’s capital.
Russian Arkady Babchenko, who moved to the city last year following threats in his homeland, was fired on after returning from buying bread and died of his injuries in an ambulance, police said late on Tuesday.
Police said the killing might relate to his work.
The murder will further strain ties between Ukraine and Russia, post-Soviet Union allies who fell out following the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin leader in 2014.
That prompted Putin to annex Crimea and back a war on the two nations’ border.
The incident will also resonate beyond Ukraine after the nerve-agent attack on a Russian double agent and his daughter in the UK this year triggered diplomatic expulsions around the world.
“Russia’s totalitarian machine didn’t forgive him his honesty,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman said on Facebook. “He was a real friend of Ukraine who told the truth to the world about Russian aggression.”
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov yesterday complained that his nation was being accused without proof, calling the killing “a tragedy.”
The Russian Investigative Committee said it had opened a probe into Babchenko’s murder.
Babchenko, 41, rose to fame as a war correspondent in Russia.
He traveled to the conflict in Ukraine, which continues to claim lives, and criticized the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which killed 298 people.
Investigators from Australia and the Netherlands last week blamed Russia for the tragedy.
Having been called unpatriotic over a piece last year on Russia’s intervention in Syria, Babchenko complained of an atmosphere of hate toward his work.
“Some called for me to be stripped of citizenship, others are making an online game where you can beat me to death,” Babchenko said. “In Russia, dissidents like me are harassed with impunity.”
Babchenko worked for a local Ukrainian TV channel and continued to report threats to his life.
Police yesterday published an identikit picture of his killer.
His wife, who was in their apartment when the murder took place, was in shock and unable to be questioned.
Babchenko’s death follows those of prominent Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet, killed in a car bomb in Kiev in 2016, and former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov, who was shot dead in the city last year.
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