By all accounts, this looks like another elaborate psy-op designed to reinforce US-led narrative that Moscow murders journalists.

On Tuesday, the western corporate media went into overdrive when reporting on the alleged ‘murder’ of the “anti-Putin Russian journalist,” Arkady Babchenko, claiming that Moscow was behind the murder.

Today, Sergey Gritsak, head of the SBU, Ukraine’s state security agency, revealed that Babchenko was indeed alive and well, and that the whole murder story was merely ‘a ruse’ designed to prevent a $30,000 ‘planned contract hit’ on the journalist – based on information the SBU had received about an assassination attempt on Babchenko. Naturally, the Ukrainian officials claim that their elaborate hoax had somehow derailed the nefarious plot.

Critics are now accusing mainstream western and Ukrainian news outlets of obfuscating the real scandal of dead journalists in Ukraine following the US-backed coup d’etat in February 2014.

I can't stop thinking of 11+ journalists actually killed in #Ukraine since the West-backed #Maidan Putsch. All of them critical of resulting new regime. Remember the collective display of trauma by Western journalists over killing of Buzina, Rocchelli & Stenin? Yeah, neither do I https://t.co/KosMA3JL8P

— Mark Sleboda (@MarkSleboda1) May 30, 2018

Today offered yet another reminder that in politics/geopolitics ALL official statements should be treated as simulacrum and taken at face value.

— Ollie Richardson (@O_Rich_) May 30, 2018

“I want to congratulate his family, all of us and the entire world, which is watching it, and congratulate Babchenko with a third birthday,” Gritsak wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the term, ‘Third Birthday’, referenced previously by Babchenko years ago.

The change of Babchenko’s status from murder victim to SBU agent didn’t stop Kiev from still accusing Moscow of planning to kill the journalist. Gritsak insists that there was a hit on Babchenko ordered by the Russian intelligence. He claimed the contract to kill was worth $30,000 and that the organizer of the crime was arrested.

Incredibly, Babchenko is now claiming that the Ukraine staging of his death was part of a wider SBU operation to prevent “massive terrorist attacks” in Ukraine.

“As far as I know, this operation was in the pipeline for two months. I was let in the loop a month ago. Over this month I say the guys worked really hard. They were constantly in contact with me. We deliberated, thought things out, acted. And this covert action was the result,” said Babchenko at the press conference.

Babchenko is best known for his war coverage, and for his previous military experience fighting with the Russian Army in Chechnya.