Following several high-profile and still unsolved murders in Kiev – including those of Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet and former Russian deputy Denis Voronenkov – Mr Avakov said, “If we could do such operations in all the other major cases, then we would do it every day.”

Babchenko moved to Kiev last year after receiving death threats for his criticism of Russia’s leaders and military operations in Ukraine and Syria. Babchenko's wife said on Tuesday she had found her husband at the entrance to their apartment block with bullet wounds in his back, and he was reported to have died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. Babchenko, who is the author of a beloved memoir of his war service in Chechnya, and who had fled to Kiev from his native Russia last year, stunned the post-Soviet world when he appeared alive and well at a Kiev press conference yesterday in a black hoody.
Arkady Babchenko, who was reportedly assassinated yesterday in Kiev, Ukraine, appears on live television stating that the assassination was staged.