The Kremlin has rejected allegations that it was behind the murder of the journalist Arkady Babchenko. Babchenko, a famed Russian war correspondent and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin's government, was gunned down at his apartment in Kiev on Tuesday evening. He was 41. Volodymyr Grysman, the Ukrainian prime minister, said immediately after the killing that he believed the "Russian totalitarian machine" was likely involved in the killing. "I am convinced that the Russian totalitarian machine did not forgive him his honesty and principled stance," he said. "A true friend of Ukraine who was telling the world the truth about Russian aggression. His murderers should be punished." Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, said on Wednesday that the suggestions of Kremlin involvement in the murder were "anti Russian smears."<doc-sep>Update: Arkady Babchenko, the Russian journalist whose murder was dramatically announced by Ukraine on Tuesday, emerged very much alive on Wednesday and said he had staged his own death in order to thwart a plot by Moscow to kill him. Read the latest news here. A dissident Russian journalist has been shot at his apartment in Kiev in a high-profile murder that police said may have been tied to his reporting. Arkady Babchenko, a veteran Russian war correspondent, was shot three times in the back as he left his apartment to buy bread. He was found bleeding by his wife. Babchenko, 41, died in the ambulance to the hospital, a government official said. The killing appeared to be targeted. The gunman had apparently lain in wait for him outside his apartment. The head of Ukraine’s police force said that two motives were being considered: his “professional work and civil position”. Police on Wednesday evening had not named a suspect, but did post a sketch of a bearded man in a baseball hat. Babchenko had grown highly critical of the Russian government in recent years. He criticised Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his support for the separatists of south-east Ukraine. He left Russia in February 2017, writing that it was “a country I no longer feel safe in”. The killing was the most recent murder of a high-profile dissident in Kiev, a city that has become a refuge for some of Moscow’s most vehement critics, as well as the scene of targeted assassinations that have remained unsolved for years. In 2016, the investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet was killed in a car bombing outside his apartment. Some journalists have claimed that Ukraine’s powerful intelligence agency has sought to stifle the investigation. Babchenko’s murder quickly attracted international attention. Harlem Désir, the media freedom representative at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said he was horrified by Babchenko’s death. “I call on Ukraine authorities to conduct immediate & full investigation,” he tweeted. Ukrainian and Russian officials immediately traded finger-pointing over his death. Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker who serves as an adviser to the interior minister, said on Facebook that investigators would be looking at “Russian spy agencies’ efforts to get rid of those who are trying to tell the truth about what is going on in Russia and Ukraine”. “Ukraine is becoming the most dangerous country for reporters,” Russian lawmaker Yevgeny Revenko said in remarks carried by the state RIA Novosti news agency. “The Ukrainian government can’t guarantee basic freedoms.” Babchenko served as a soldier in both wars in Chechnya before turning his bleak experience into the acclaimed memoir One Soldier’s War. He served as a war correspondent for more than a decade, writing about the war in Georgia and later in southeast Ukraine. He fled Russia in 2017 after provoking a scandal in a Facebook post that expressed indifference over the deaths of a military choir and other passengers aboard a Russian plane that crashed en route to Syria. In the backlash, his home address was published and he received personal threats. Some people called for Babchenko to be stripped of his Russian citizenship. He moved first to the Czech Republic and then to Israel, before settling in Kiev, where he worked for the Crimean broadcaster ATR. “All the elements of the propaganda machine were engaged,” he wrote in the Guardian last year, calling the experience “so personal, so scary, that I was forced to flee”. A number of other critics of Russia have been killed in Kiev in recent years. An ethnic Chechen fighter named Amina Okuyeva was killed outside Kiev in a car bomb in October. In March 2017, renegade Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot and killed at the entrance of a hotel in Kiev. Ukrainian prosecutors alleged that Voronenkov, who had toed the Kremlin line while serving as a Russian lawmaker but became a critic of the Kremlin after his 2016 move to Ukraine, was killed on orders from a Russian crime lord. As a reporter, Babchenko staked out a position as an opponent of war. His memoirs were the opposite of triumphant, describing the dangerous, banal daily life of a soldier on the frontlines of the conflict in Chechnya. Asked what he wanted to say in the memoirs, he told the Guardian in 2007: “I exist. I was in this war. And this is what I saw.” The day of his death, he wrote online about an incident in which a Ukrainian general denied him permission to travel on a helicopter during the beginning of the war in 2014. The helicopter was later shot down. “Fourteen people were killed,” Babchenko wrote. “I was lucky. It turns out to have been the second day of my birth.”<doc-sep>Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist critical of the Kremlin, has been killed in Kiev. Mr Babchenko was shot at his home on Tuesday evening and died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. According to Anton Geraschenko, a Ukrainian politician with close links to the police and security services, the journalist had left his apartment to buy provisions, and was attacked on his return. "When Arkady opened the door of his flat, the killer cowardly shot him in the back, firing several shots," the politician wrote on Facebook. A lawyer by education, Mr Babchenko was a two-time veteran of the Chechen conflict, travelling first as a conscript, and later as a contract soldier. It was in Chechnya that he discovered a career with words, publishing a book on his experiences to critical acclaim. The journalism that followed — whether it be from Russia or, later, Ukraine — was typically authoritative, powerful and eloquent. He would often report from the extreme frontlines, tolerated to an unusual extent by soldiers who recognised his military experience. Danger was rarely far away from his workplace. Just a few hours before his death, Mr Babchenko wrote on Twitter about his fortune to have been refused travel on a Ukrainian military helicopter in 2014. "Four years ago General Kulchitsky wouldn't take me on his helicopter because there wasn't the space. It was shot down two hours after this photograph. 14 people died, but I got lucky. It's a second birthday for me." Mr Babchenko fled Russia for the Czech Republic in February 2017, before eventually settling in Ukraine. “There is an informed opinion that it would be a good idea for me to live outside our god-protected Motherland for a while,” he wrote at the time of his emigration. Ukrainian police officers guard in the entrance to a house where Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was shot (Reuters) While some friends wondered whether Mr Babchenko had overreacted, it was clear that his critical reporting of the wars in Ukraine and Syria had made him a target. Russian state TV was particularly forthright in criticising a blog post written by the journalist about the crash of a military aircraft bound for Syria. Mr Babchenko had expressed “indifference” for the deaths of “military representatives” and reminded readers of Russian excesses in Aleppo. The journalist was a prominent hate figure for Moscow, and this will no doubt form the basis of any investigation. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a social media posting late on Tuesday he was convinced that what he called "the Russian totalitarian machine" had not forgiven Babchenko for what Groysman called his "honesty." Equally, however, Mr Babchenko's murder continues a line of high-profile assassinations in Kiev, not all of which seem to be Russia-related. The country remains highly militarised, with straightforward access to weapons, and the influence of far-right groups connected to government is an ongoing concern. A report into the 2016 murder of Pavlo Sheremet by the Committee to Protect Journalists criticised the Ukrainian authorities handling of the investigation, suggesting they had prioritised Russian explanations over possible domestic motives. On Tuesday, Moscow denied accusations it had anything to do with the journalist’s murder. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Ukrainian allegation part of an anti-Russian campaign, the TASS news agency reported. In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry also said journalists were being killed with impunity in Ukraine. “Bloody crimes and total impunity have become routine for the Kiev regime. We demand that the Ukrainian authorities make every effort to promptly investigate,” it said on Facebook. According to head of Kiev police Andrei Krischenko, authorities are working on two motives: Mr Babchenko's work and his civic position.The Investigative Committee of Russia also said it had opened a criminal case into Babchenko’s death. Dmitry Muratov, founder of the Novaya Gazeta paper to which Mr Babchenko contributed, said his publication would conduct its own investigation into the murder. "100 per cent this is connected to his journalism," he said. "I can't tell you who did it, but I can tell you we're going to try to find out."<doc-sep>He claimed this Facebook post, in which he described Russia as an "aggressor", led to death threats and abuse from the Russian state, writing in a piece for The Guardian that this forced him to leave "a country I no longer feel safe in".<doc-sep>
KIEV (Reuters) - A prominent Russian journalist and critic of President Vladimir Putin was shot dead in Ukraine where he had fled into exile following threats, police said on Tuesday. Arkady Babchenko, 41, died of his wounds in an ambulance after his wife found him covered in his blood in their home, police said, adding they suspected the murder was due to Babchenko’s professional activities. Babchenko, a former soldier in the Chechen war who became one of Russia’s best-known war correspondents, had left his homeland fearing for his life after criticizing Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria. He had been denounced by pro-government politicians in Russia over comments on social media about the Russian bombing of Aleppo in Syria’s war, and over his characterization of Russia as an aggressor toward Ukraine. “The first and the most probable version is his professional activity,” Kiev police chief Andriy Kryshchenko said at a televised press briefing when asked what police suspected lay behind the murder. Babchenko’s wife is in a state of shock and police are unable to speak to her, he said. Ukrainian authorities released a drawing of the man they suspect is Babchenko’s assassin, around 40-45 years old, with a grey beard and wearing a cap. Two years ago Pavel Sheremet, a Belarussian journalist known for his criticism of his home country’s leadership and his friendship with the slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was blown up in a car bomb in central Kiev. Slideshow ( 12 images ) “Putin’s regime takes aim at those who cannot be broken or intimidated,” Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and adviser to the interior minister, wrote on Facebook. Babchenko’s house had run out of bread and he had gone to the shops to buy some, Gerashchenko said. He was gunned down on Tuesday by someone waiting for him in the stairwell at the entrance to his home. He was shot him in the back several times. “Today in Kiev on the threshold of the apartment where he lived, famous Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was shot and killed, a consistent opponent of the Putin regime and a friend of Ukraine.” In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said journalists were being killed with impunity in Ukraine. “Bloody crimes and total impunity have become routine for the Kiev regime. We demand that the Ukrainian authorities make every effort to promptly investigate,” it said on Facebook. The Investigative Committee of Russia said it had opened a criminal case into Babchenko’s death. Slideshow ( 12 images ) Babchenko took part in the war in Chechnya as a soldier. He then he became a war reporter for several Russian newspapers. On Feb. 27 last year, he wrote on Facebook that he had left Russia. He reported on Russia sending private military contractors to Syria and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 in July 2014 in eastern Ukraine, for which investigators last week held the Russian state responsible. Russian authorities again denied any connection with the plane’s downing over an area of Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatist forces. In his last Facebook post before he was killed, Babchenko recalled an incident four years ago when he was meant to fly in a Ukrainian military helicopter in Ukraine’s embattled Donbass region. The helicopter was overloaded and he was not permitted to fly. It was shot down and 14 people on board were killed. “And I was lucky. Second birthday, it turns out,” he wrote.