Babchenko was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. News reports had been aired, mournful obituaries published, outraged tweets cursing Moscow flew hither and thither. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman condemned “the Russian totalitarian machine” for assassinating a journalist simply because of his “honesty and principled stance”. UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson proclaimed  that he was “Appalled to see another vocal Russian journalist, Arkady Babchenko, murdered.”

Not a soul questioned it: old Babchenko was as dead as a door-nail.

And then, like the ghost of an old business partner announcing three Christmas visitations, there he was. Everyone knew that Babchenko was dead. They didn’t suspect it, they weren’t relatively confident about it. They knew it.

And it was all fake.

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The main purpose of this article is to draw attention to an important op-ed by an Off-Guardian editorwhich asks us to consider a hugely significant hypothetical question: what if Babchenko had, for whatever reason, remained “dead”? What if, instead of appearing at a press conference the day after his faked assassination publicly apologizing to his poor traumatized wife, the controversial Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko had put on a wig, obtained some fake papers, and started a new life in Hawaii? What would have happened then?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…