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.
This government-produced fake news is an extremely bad idea, even if its motivation is understandable. Even though the SBU’s smiling director says that Babchenko’s walking dead adventure was necessary to draw out Kremlin killers, this week’s chicanery has hurt both Babchenko’s credibility and that of Ukraine’s government.
The central guilty party here is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has a record of liquidating inconvenient journalists and who is — no need to doubt — planning a similar end for Babchenko as he arranged for Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov, and Maxim Borodin. There is no need either to doubt the Ukrainian government’s reasons to fear Russian intelligence services.
As we have noted, Ukrainian critics of the Russian president have a tendency to become victims of violent murders, and they understandably fray the confidence of the Ukrainian state and prompt an equally understandable desire to outplay Putin at his own spy-wars games.
But that does not excuse this week’s shenanigans, or Ukraine’s enlistment of Babchenko in them. While SBU officers’ first responsibility is to the security of their state, Babchenko’s first responsibility as a civilian journalist is to the truth. By joining the SBU’s plot to deceive the public, Babchenko has harmed his own credibility. His reporting will be doubted as “fake news,” and denounced as such by the Kremlin. The Kremlin’s lies will continue, but now more people will believe it.
The self-inflicted damage done by Ukraine’s government is huge. The SBU’s reputation has long been low, and this showmanship will push it lower. Its critical mission is to identify and disrupt Russian state aggression and organized crime, and there are better ways to protect Babchenko and trap those hunting him. The SBU’s antics are a pure example of what intelligence professionals call “blowback” — an intelligence operation which even in success backfires against those who carried it out.
The costs of this choice won’t simply be felt in Ukraine. In neighboring states Russia, Moldova, and Hungary, free and independent reporting is increasingly subordinated to state propaganda. In the absence of good reporting, criminals, kleptocrats, and politicians find space to expand their own interests at the expense of the public. What the populations of these nations need is not more fake news, but more factual reporting.
It’s lamentable that in attempting to confront a determined enemy of those values, Ukraine just ended up burning them.
