Arkady Babchenko shot dead

Arkady Babchenko, a Russian war correspondent and veteran who fought in Chechnya, was shot in the back at his Kyiv home. Police believe he was targeted for his “professional activities” after receiving death threats.

Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist who voiced criticism about Russia’s “wars of aggression” in Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Syria, was reportedly shot in the back at his Kyiv apartment on Tuesday. He died before paramedics could get him to the hospital.

Ukrainian police believe he was likely targeted for his work. “The leading and obvious line of inquiry is that of his professional activities,” Kyiv police chief Andriy Kryshchenko told the Interfax Ukraine news agency

Harlem Desir, the representative on media freedom for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said he was “outraged by this horrific act.”

“I call on the authorities to swiftly and thoroughly investigate the circumstances of this assassination and to bring the perpetrators and those who ordered it to justice.”

Concerted campaign

Babchenko left Russia in 2017, facing calls for his citizenship to be revoked and a growing number of threats for voicing his indifference to a December 2016 plane crash that killed a Russian military choir en route to Syria to perform for air force pilots.

Writing on the subject, he called Russia an “aggressor” and criticized the air force’s indiscriminate bombing campaign in Aleppo.

Babchenko was accused of lacking patriotism, something he called ironic considering he fought for his country in the first separatist war in Chechnya in the 1990s. Nevertheless, pro-government politicians began to denounce him and call for him to be jailed for his views. This was followed by a media campaign against him on state-run television.

Death threats

Shortly thereafter, aggression toward Babchenko began to snowball on social media platforms, and he no longer felt he could stay in the country. He said his address had been published online and that he and his family had received thousands of threats. He also pointed to similar incidents in which colleagues had been brutally beaten as a result of such online campaigns.

Babchenko served as a war correspondent after leaving the army and wrote a book about his time in Chechnya titled, “One Soldier’s War.” He went on to write for a number of outlets, including the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Most recently, he had worked as a host at the Crimean Tatar TV station ATR.

js/cmk (AP, Reuters)