Tag Archives: Hit list

Nowhere to hide from Russia, says Ukrainian journalist named on hit-list

Ukrainian journalist Matvey Ganapolsky speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kiev, Ukraine June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Olena Vasina and Sergei Karazy

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian journalist Matvei Ganapolsky sees no point in hiding abroad from Russians who might be trying to kill him, because if they want to find him, geography won’t stop them.

Ganapolsky is on a list of 47 people who Ukraine says Russia has targeted for assassination, a list which also includes Yevgeny Kiselyov, a veteran anchorman who became one of Russia’s best known television journalists in the 1990s.

Ukrainian authorities say they obtained the list after faking the murder of exiled Russian dissident Arkady Babchenko, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, in a ruse staged to flush out a genuine plot against him.

Ganapolsky, 64, was offered protection by the Ukrainian state after being told, after Babchenko’s sudden reappearance, that he too was a Russian target.

Fleeing abroad won’t help, he says, as the poisoning of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in March showed.

“The Skripals were poisoned in Great Britain,” Ganapolsky told Reuters in an interview.

“To send a man to kill somebody is a question of the price of a plane ticket. And, in low season, tickets are on sale with a discount. And moreover you have low-cost airlines nowadays. That’s why geography doesn’t matter in this case.”

Born in western Ukraine, Ganapolsky moved to Moscow in 1973 and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, made his name as a journalist with outspoken criticism of corruption in Russian law enforcement and restrictions on free speech.

He eventually came back to Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was given Ukrainian citizenship by President Petro Poroshenko.

He and Kiselyov came forward on Friday to say they had been contacted by the Ukrainian authorities after Babchenko’s faked murder.

Kiselyov, one of Russia’s most prominent liberal journalists of the post-Soviet era who co-founded Russia’s NTV, came to Ukraine in 2008 saying he had been squeezed out of the mainstream media.

“I despise Putin. I am not afraid of him,” Kiselyov told Reuters in an interview. “I am not saying that I do not sometimes feel fear for my life, or security of my family, my friends and relatives, but the feeling that I have is a feeling of … contempt.”

Kiselyov supports Ukraine in its standoff with Russia over Crimea and the outbreak of a Russian-backed separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

“If you are a political journalist, a commentator, and you take sides in this war, and I am taking Ukrainian side, well it involves certain risks,” he said.

Ukraine has received both praise and criticism for the stunt to fake Babchenko’s death. Some said the incident, which involved the phoney distribution of lurid details about his shooting, was a stunt in poor taste which had sparked a false outpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia.

For Ganapolsky, it is better to believe the threat is real than not believe it. “… Babchenko believed in it and maybe that was what saved his life,” he said.

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

‘We found Russian hit-list of 47 people’, Ukraine tells allies

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko (C), who was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital on May 29, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (R) and head of the state security service (SBU) Vasily Gritsak attend a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine May 30, 2018. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Matthias Williams and Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine, seeking to reassure its Western allies after faking the murder of a Russian dissident to thwart what it said was a plot on his life, told them on Friday its ruse led to the discovery of a hit-list of 47 people whom Russia planned to kill abroad.

The Kiev authorities drew both praise and consternation this week for staging the fake shooting of Arkady Babchenko, an exiled journalist, which they said was necessary to protect him and dozens of others who were targeted in a genuine Russian plot.

Russia has poured scorn on Ukraine’s allegations while some organizations and commentators criticized Kiev for the kind of trickery which Ukraine routinely accuses Russia of using.

Ukraine’s credibility matters as it counts on Western financial support and sanctions on Moscow in its standoff with Russia over the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and a Russian-backed separatist conflict in which more than 10,000 people have been killed.

General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, one of the few Ukrainian officials who knew about the ruse in advance, briefed the ambassadors of the United States, the European Union and other countries.

In a statement after the meeting, Lutsenko said faking the murder was necessary because it allowed Ukrainian investigators to obtain more information about the list of people targeted and about who had ordered the murder.

As a result, “the investigation received a list of 47 (!) people who could be the next victims of terrorists,” he wrote on Facebook.

He did not provide any names but said the list included prominent Ukrainian and Russian journalists.

The 47 number is higher than the 30 people, including Babchenko, whom Ukraine originally believed were targets.

The investigation also gleaned important evidence linking the plot to Russian intelligence services, which would be divulged later, Lutsenko said.

STATE PROTECTION

Ukrainian officials reported on Tuesday that Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, had been gunned down in his apartment building in Kiev. Lurid pictures of him lying in a pool of blood were published, and officials suggested Russia was behind the killing, something Moscow flatly denied.

A day later, Babchenko appeared in public alive, andUkrainian state security officials admitted they had faked his death to foil and expose what they described as a Russian plot to assassinate him.

That drew criticism from media and commentators abroad who questioned whether the ruse and the false outpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia it provoked had undermined credibility in Kiev and handing the Kremlin a propaganda gift.

One senior EU country diplomat who attended Friday’s meeting said Lutsenko had given a convincing explanation to justify the means Ukraine had employed.

“I’m happy, others are happier than before. I’d say it was the right thing to,” the diplomat told Reuters, adding that Lutsenko did “acknowledge that the media reaction came as a surprise and that side should have been handled better.”

Separately two television presenters based in Ukraine, one Russian and one Ukrainian, disclosed publicly that the Ukrainian authorities had shown them evidence of being on Russia’s hit list and were now living under state protection.

A senior European Union official involved in Ukraine said the staged murder could undermine trust in Kiev if the government did not come forward quickly with evidence of what they claimed and the plot’s links to Russia.

A marker will be the July 9 EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels, where President Petro Poroshenko will need to show proof, if not before, the official said.

“What if they fail to provide evidence? It all depends on how well they follow up,” the official said.

(This version of the story has been refiled to recast headline. Text unchanged)

(Additional reporting by Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Richard Balmforth)