INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Ganapolsky, 64, was offered protection by Ukrain after being told that he too was a Russian target.KIEV:
Ukrainian journalist Matvei Ganapolsky sees no point in hiding abroad from Russians who might be trying to kill him, because if they want to
find him, geography won't stop them.Ganapolsky is on a list of 47 people who Ukraine says Russia has targeted for assassination, a list
which also includes Yevgeny Kiselyov, a veteran anchorman who became one of Russia's best known television journalists in the
1990s.Ukrainian authorities say they obtained the list after faking the murder of exiled Russian dissident Arkady Babchenko, a prominent
critic of President Vladimir Putin, in a ruse staged to flush out a genuine plot against him.Ganapolsky, 64, was offered protection by the
Ukrainian state after being told, after Babchenko's sudden reappearance, that he too was a Russian target.Fleeing abroad won't help, he
says, as the poisoning of the Russian former spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in March showed
"The Skripals were poisoned in Great Britain," Ganapolsky told Reuters in an interview."To send a man to kill somebody is a question of the
And, in low season, tickets are on sale with a discount
And moreover you have low-cost airlines nowadays
That's why geography doesn't matter in this case."Born in western Ukraine, Ganapolsky moved to Moscow in 1973 and, after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, made his name as a journalist with outspoken criticism of corruption in Russian law enforcement and restrictions on
free speech.He eventually came back to Ukraine following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was given Ukrainian citizenship by
President Petro Poroshenko.He and Kiselyov came forward on Friday to say they had been contacted by the Ukrainian authorities after
Babchenko's faked murder.Kiselyov, one of Russia's most prominent liberal journalists of the post-Soviet era who co-founded Russia's NTV,
came to Ukraine in 2008 saying he had been squeezed out of the mainstream media."I despise Putin
I am not afraid of him," Kiselyov told Reuters in an interview
"I am not saying that I do not sometimes feel fear for my life, or security of my family, my friends and relatives, but the feeling that I
have is a feeling of contempt."Kiselyov supports Ukraine in its standoff with Russia over Crimea and the outbreak of a Russian-backed
separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine."If you are a political journalist, a commentator, and you take sides in this war, and I am taking
Ukrainian side, well it involves certain risks," he said.Ukraine has received both praise and criticism for the stunt to fake Babchenko's
Some said the incident, which involved the phoney distribution of lurid details about his shooting, was a stunt in poor taste which had
sparked a false outpouring of grief and finger-pointing at Russia.For Ganapolsky, it is better to believe the threat is real than not
" Babchenko believed in it and maybe that was what saved his life," he said.© Thomson Reuters 2018(This story has not been edited by
TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
