Who is the Russian journalist in the news for staging his own death?

Meet Arkady Babchenko, a Russian war veteran and investigative journalist. He was reportedly shot and killed on May 29, 2018 but showed up at a press conference the next day to reveal it was a sting operation to capture his would-be assassins.

Two months before that, he spoke at the Human Rights Foundation’s PutinCon in New York, where he detailed how Putin weaponizes propaganda in his wars.

“Mr. Putin understands the power of television right away, and he used that mechanism. The use of TV and the use of hatred is the foundation of the government today,” he stated at the convention. “First were the Chechens, then all the immigrants, then the LGBT community, then the Georgians, then the Ukrainians, then it was moved against the liberals, and now it is targeting the whole world. [Today], for Russia, America is the biggest enemy. This mechanism is working, it’s dangerous, and I escaped from Russia — for years, I was waiting for an arrest and that’s a very hard thing to experience — I would expect an arrest every day, and that’s a very hard thing to experience. I would expect an arrest every day, I would be afraid to go the entrance of my building.”