$30,000 (£22,600): that was the alleged price offered by an intermediary to a contract killer to get rid of Arkady Babchenko, a dissident Russian journalist persecuted for his crusade against Putin and the Kremlin. Babchenko made his name as a war correspondent who had reported from Chechnya and Ukraine. After he had accused the Russian government of being the aggressor in Syria, Babchenko received death threats and fled Russia in February 2017, moving to Czech Republic and then Ukraine. On 29 May 2018, reports said he was shot at home, in the back, and died in an ambulance.
On the afternoon of 30 May, though, Babchenko made a shocking appearance at a press conference in Kiev. Less than 24 hours after his reported death, the journalist explained that a month earlier he had been approached by the Ukrainian security service and told about a plot to assassinate him. Babchenko co-operated with the police to fake his own death and help catch people trying to kill him. As a result, the person acting as a go-between was arrested in Kiev.
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