Most of the journalists and activists whose names were on the “hit list of 47” alongside that of journalist Arkady Babchenko could have fallen victim to the “Russian security services” and are now under round-the-clock protection, according to Head of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) Vasyl Hrytsak.
“I promise this [Russian] trace is already there. And we will talk about it,” Hrytsak told reporters in Kyiv on June 25 when asked about progress in the Babchenko inquiry.
As reported, on the evening of May 29 first mass media and later Ukrainian authorities said that Russian citizen Babchenko, who had worked for the Kyiv-based television channel ATR since 2017, had been “shot dead” on the stairway landing in his apartment block in Kyiv. The following day, Hrytsak said at a briefing that the announcement was part of a security operation aimed at foiling a plot to kill the journalist. Babchenko himself then appeared before the reporters.
On the same day, it emerged that the organizer of the plot, Boris German, who had offered and partially pre-paid $30,000 to a Donbas combatant to kill Babchenko, had been arrested. German talked about eliminating a total of 30 people in Ukraine.
Shortly afterwards, O. Tsymbaliuk, a monk, volunteer, and activist with Right Sector (banned in Russia), aka Aristarkh, a former hierodeacon with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of both the Moscow and Kyiv Patriarchates, said that he was the man who had been hired to kill Babchenko, after which he passed the information on to the SBU.
Later, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said there were 47 potential victims on the hit list.
