Russian journalist, a critic of Putin, gunned down in Ukraine

A war reporter and critic of President Vladimir Putin who left his native Russia after receiving death threats was shot to death Tuesday in Ukraine in what government officials there alleged was a hit ordered by Moscow.

Arkady Babchenko, 41, was shot in the back three times while entering his apartment building here in the Ukrainian capital and died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, according to police.

“Russia’s totalitarian machine did not forgive his honesty and principles,” Volodymyr Groysman, the prime minister of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook. He called Babchenko “a true friend of Ukraine who honestly told the world the truth about Russia’s aggression.”

Tensions between the two countries boiled over in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian separatists in southeastern Ukraine.

Journalism colleagues also claimed that Moscow organized the killing.

“Arkady Babchenko was killed following a direct order from a terrorist state, the Russian Federation,” said Ayder Muzhdabayev, who worked with Babchenko on the ATR television network.

Vladimir Jabarov, a Russian senator, pushed back against the allegations, arguing that they were part of a propaganda campaign against Russia.

“Kiev will try to use Babchenko’s death in its own interests,” he told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Babchenko served in the Russian army, fighting against Chechen separatists in two wars since 1994, before turning to journalism. He published reports about Russia’s 2008 war with the former Soviet republic of Georgia and worked for a string of publications and broadcasters that harshly criticized the Kremlin.

He started receiving death threats after covering the 2016 crash of a Russian military plane near the Black Sea city of Sochi that killed 92. Most of the victims were part of the Red Army Choir, a Cold War-era artistic outfit dubbed the “Kremlin’s singing weapon” that was going to perform for Russian servicemen in Syria.

Babchenko said that the choir “did not deserve compassion,” prompting federal lawmakers, a nationalist youth group and other Kremlin supporters to accuse him of “treason” and demand he be stripped of Russian citizenship.

Babchenko also wrote about separatists in the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk who vowed to “hunt” him down.

Mirovalev is a special correspondent.