His ‘death’ was staged by the Ukrainians.
Why would they do that? To foil a real murder plot by the dastardly Russians. Quite how this idiocy foils anything is beyond me. If they’d sustained this and left the world believing him dead then OK. But to carry on for only a few days and then present him at a press conference achieves nothing besides putting his wife, who knew nothing, through torment.
Fuck the Russians and the Ukrainians. They’re as bad as each other.
The Americans really need to improve their propaganda department. Maybe hire some Hollywood types…
Huh? Allegedly, they did it to catch the person hired to kill him, which the supposedly did. Exactly how playing dead did this, we haven’t been told.
Until the facts come out, it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Why are the Ukrainians, who did what they did to catch a would-be hit man, as bad as the Russians, who allegedly hired a hit-man to murder a journalist who offended them?
So the security service thinks that they have intel that a middleman has arranged a hit for the Russians by hiring a local thug - maybe the local thug was actually an informant, or they have intercepts of conversations, or whatever. Perhaps they want more evidence of the conspiracy, or to see how wide it ranges. So they put out the story that the target has been killed and then monitor the communications among the principals in light of that information. Maybe the middleman drops off additional cash for the local thug, or the Russians call to say ‘good job’, or the middleman asks the Russians for more money now that the job is done, or whatever. Or maybe there’s frantic communication between them all wondering who got to their target first. Or maybe the middleman tries to arrange a new thug to erase the first thug. In any event, publicly declaring the target dead may produce new communications among the (apparently already suspected) conspirators which can open up additional avenues of investigation.
It’s almost as if Russia was feeding its own spin on news reports to American readers.
Heh. It’s a weird spin, though. I mean, it isn’t even attempting to be convincing. 
Look who leads the United States right now, because millions of unbelievably stupid Americans voted for him. Convincing the Trump voters is not something you do by actually being convincing.
“If a tree falls in the forest… it’s America’s fault!!!”
**Malthus **took my words out of my mouth; why do the Ukrainians telling a lie, to foil a murder plot, make them as bad as the people actually trying to carry out the murder?
The same way that someone extending his hand and pulling it back with a “PSYCH!” is just as bad as me stabbing him in the jugular with my car keys.
Unclear how this fabrication actually would serve to foil a murder plot. I wouldn’t accept this at face value, seems too odd and the Ukrainians have every incentive to try and keep the pressure on Russia. Also, the Ukrainian government immediately pointed the finger at Russia for the killing when everyone thought Babchenko was dead. Seems reckless at best if their own security services were involved in the fake assassination, as they have now shown willingness to make accusations they know to be false.
Uh, no, the accusation is that the Russians were the ones trying to kill him, but they foiled it, but let Russia think he’d died.
Yes, we don’t have all the facts yet. Presumably, their purpose was the draw the middleman out, by claiming the hit was actually made.
They pointed the finger as part of the deception - they had to act as if the hit was real.
It is obvious that if a journalist that was critical of Putin’s Russia was hit, Russia would be behind it – and equally obvious that Ukraine would loudly blame them.
Thus, if they were to go along with the deception that the hit was actually made, they’d have to loudly blame Russia, just as they would do if the hit was real; to do otherwise would be odd. And given that Russia has actually ordered a hit, blaming Russia is not “reckless”, as they deserve blame whether the hit succeeded or not.
Of course, it is possible the Ukrainians made the whole thing up, that there was no hit ordered by anyone. However, the Ukrainians have arrested an alleged middleman.
Unless there is some sort of actual evidence that the Ukrainians invented the whole story, why immediately leap to that conclusion?