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>https://www.rt.com/russia/562630-kherson-staged-assassination-ukraine/
How Russian journalist faked his own death with pig's blood and trip to the morgue to avoid murder plot
Arkady Babchenko shocked the world when he appeared at a news conference.
ByPatrick Reevell
May 31, 2018, 7:10 PM
ABC News
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How Russian journalist faked his own death with pig's blood and trip to the morgue to avoid murder plot
Arkady Babchenko shocked the world when he appeared at a news conference.
ByPatrick Reevell
May 31, 2018, 7:10 PM
1:23
Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko attends an interview in Kiev, Ukraine, Nov. 14, 2017.
Vitalii Nosach/Reuters, FILE
Moscow – The Russian journalist who staged his own death in a sting operation with Ukrainian authorities has described how he was smeared with pig’s blood and taken to a morgue as part of the spectacular effort that he said was necessary to thwart a Russian plot to kill him.
The reporter, Arkady Babchenko, revealed the details of the operation to reporters in Ukraine's capital, Kiev on Thursday, a day after Ukraine's SBU spy agency announced that Babchenko's apparent killing was in fact an elaborate ruse.
"I only stopped being afraid at the morgue," he said.
Speaking on Thursday, Babchenko described how the operation had involved staging every step of an actual assassination. On Tuesday, Ukraine’s police said that Babchenko had been shot dead in his apartment building, saying his wife had found him covered in blood with multiple gunshot wounds. She called an ambulance, and he was declared dead before reaching the hospital. A photograph appeared in Ukrainian social media showing Babchenko’s "corpse," lying in a pool of blood with three bullet-holes in his back, while police released a sketch of a supposed 'suspect'.
On Thursday Babchenko said that he and Ukraine’s police had simulated every step of that. First, he said a make-up artist arrived at his house and he began practicing falling down.
“It was all real. I made that shirt with bullet holes in it and I laid on the floor. They have poured blood over me, I took some of it in my mouth and let it out,” Babchenko said.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-criticized-dead-journalist-subterfuge/story?id=55559223