KIEV: "Murdered" anti-Kremlin journalist Arkady Babchenko appeared alive and well at a press conference in Kiev on Wednesday as Ukraine admitted it had faked his death to expose an alleged Russian plot to kill him. Onlookers gasped and applauded as Babchenko appeared, introduced by the head of Ukraine's security service, who said the murder had been staged in order to foil an attempt on his life by Moscow. "Thanks to this operation we were able to foil a cynical plot and document how the Russian security service was planning for this crime," security service head Vasyl Grytsak said at the press conference. And Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, a former colleague of Babchenko, also questioned the value of the operation. 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.

Source: Bangkok Post May 30, 2018 16:52 UTC