Blowback — Ukraine’s fake news fiasco

Ukrainian authorities claimed Tuesday that Arkady Babchenko, a Russian dissident journalist, had been assassinated outside of his apartment in Kiev.

It was thus a pleasant surprise to see Babchenko walk into a Ukrainian government press conference the following day and announce that he was still alive. His death had been faked by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service for public consumption as a ploy to smoke out a real assassin or assassins who were said to be hunting the journalist.