Kremlin Denies It Murdered Anti-Putin Journalist in Ukraine

The Kremlin has rejected Ukraine’s allegation that it was behind Tuesday’s murder of a Russian dissident journalist in Kiev. Arkady Babchenko, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on his doorstep in the Ukrainian capital, where he lived in exile after fleeing Russia in 2016. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a Facebook post late Tuesday that “the Russian totalitarian machine” had not forgiven Babchenko for his anti-Putin reporting. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the allegation as nonsense, adding: “The investigation has not even started and the prime minister of the Ukrainian government has already announced that the Russian intelligence services did it.”