Moscow rejects Ukraine's accusation it murdered journalist

[May 30, 2018]  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has rejected Ukraine's allegation that Moscow was behind Tuesday's murder of a Russian dissident journalist in Kiev, Russia's state news agency TASS reported.

Arkady Babchenko, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday where he lived in exile. He fled Russia after he received threats for saying he did not mourn the victims of a Russian defense ministry plane crash in 2016.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a social media posting late on Tuesday he was convinced that what he called "the Russian totalitarian machine" had not forgiven Babchenko for what Groysman called his honesty.

Lavrov, who called Babchenko's killing a tragedy, said the allegation was nonsense and a continuation of what he called Kiev's anti-Russian course.

"...The investigation has not even started and the prime minister of the Ukrainian government has already announced that the Russian intelligence services did it," TASS cited Lavrov as saying.

Groysman's accusations were a matter of regret, Lavrov was quoted as saying.

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko attends an interview in Kiev, Ukraine November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Vitalii Nosach

Babchenko's murder was the fourth of a Kremlin critic in the Ukrainian capital in two years. None of the other murders, which Kiev has also blamed on Russia, have been solved.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.