Ukraine and Russia trade accusations

KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters): Ukraine and Russia traded accusations on Wednesday after a dissident Russian journalist and Kremlin critic was shot dead in Kiev, in a killing that sent shivers through the journalistic communities in both countries. Arkady Babchenko, 41, died of his wounds in an ambulance on Tuesday after an unidentified gunman shot him in the back several times as he returned home after buying bread.

Babchenko, a critic of President Vladimir Putin and of Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria, had lived in exile in the Ukrainian capital after receiving threats at home for saying he did not mourn the victims of a Russian defense ministry plane crash in 2016. 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. The Ukrainian president’s office referred reporters on Wednesday to comments by Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who said it was too early to draw conclusions but that there was “an astounding similarity to the methods Russia uses to provoke political destabilisation”. The Kremlin described such allegations as part of an anti-Russian smear campaign. “This is the height of cynicism against the backdrop of such a brutal murder, it is anti-Russian bluster instead of talking about the need to conduct a thorough, objective investigation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Peskov said Ukraine had become a dangerous country for journalists and press freedom there was under severe pressure. Babchenko’s killing was the fourth of a Kremlin critic in the Ukrainian capital in two years. None of the others, which Kiev has also blamed on Russia, have been solved. “We think this should attract very tough international reaction which will move the Ukrainian authorities towards active measures to resolve the situation,” said Peskov.

Russian investigators have opened their own investigation into the killing and said they are ready to cooperate with Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), also flatly denied any Russian involvement in the killing.

Harlem Desir, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, said he was on his way to Kiev to meet the Babchenko’s colleagues on Wednesday as a slew of Western foreign ministers condemned the killing. “I am outraged by this horrific act,” Desir said in an earlier statement.

 

The post Ukraine and Russia trade accusations appeared first on The Frontier Post.

from The Frontier Post https://ift.tt/2sr0wLG