Russian journalist and Kremlin critic shot and killed in Ukraine

A Russian journalist critical of President Vladimir Putin’s government was shot and killed in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev on Tuesday, according to authorities.

The Associated Press reported that Arkady Babchenko, 41, was found by his wife suffering from several gunshot wounds and died on the way to the hospital. Babchenko fled Russia in 2017 after stating that he was receiving death threats over his reporting.

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He relocated to Kiev, where he began working for a Crimean television station and produced coverage critical of Russia’s military actions in the region. Police told The Moscow Times that Babchenko’s work was the likely motive for the killing.

The attack comes just months after another well-known critic of Putin’s government, Tatiana Felgengauer, was stabbed in the neck but survived after an intruder attacked her television station with a knife. Russian authorities brushed the attack off as a mental health issue. Another anchor at the same station left months earlier after being attacked multiple times.

“From our standpoint, it would be illogical and wrong to color this tragic incident, which actually was a manifestation of madness, with a political tint,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS, the official state-run Russian news agency, last year.