Ukrainian Security Service receives complete list of those who were to be killed along with journalist Babchenko
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies received a complete list of 30 people who were supposed to be killed at the request of the Russian intelligence agency, just as journalist Arkady Babchenko was to be. This was stated by Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko on a broadcast on the TV channel “1 + 1,” TSN reported.
“At one of the meetings, Herman – and this is recorded on audio and video according to the court’s decision – gave him (the killer) half the sum of 15 thousand dollars. At the next meeting, Mr. Herman reported that he had an even longer list. He wanted another person killed – a EuroMaidan activist from Odessa. At the next meeting he said, ‘I have one more hit.’ It was a former Russian FSB officer who fled Russia and was living in Ukraine. The entire list contained about 30 names. In this situation, I consider the actions of both the investigator and the prosecutor absolutely correct in that they went to the point of staging murder so that, after the alleged execution took place, Herman would be more open and would probably provide the alleged killer with a full list of victims,” said Lutsenko.
According to him, there was no 100% guarantee that he would do it.
“But when it comes to the lives of 27 people, because the three of us already knew, it seems to me that this was a justified step, which is used in many countries of the world and in ours in particular. We have the list. Now the list is in the hands of the Security Service of Ukraine, and all the people on the list will receive proper protection from those who ordered their deaths,” said the Prosecutor General.
Lutsenko said the second reason for staging the murder was the desire to get to the person who ordered the hits.
“The second question is why we conducted this operation. We expected that after the alleged execution, the organizer, which we suspected was Herman, would become much more open and, one way or another, give us more information about the person who ordered the hit. Now we know – directly from him – that it was Russian intelligence, he was acting on their orders. But before the staged killing, we did not have the exact name of the person who ordered the killing. So we staged the killing in order to coerce Herman to be more open and see if we could find out exactly who in the Kremlin is after dozens of people who are not in the Russian regime’s favor,” the prosecutor general said.