What the Babchenko affair showed by 3 June 2018

What had the world made of the Babchenko affair by 3 June 2018? Within days, a reported murder in Kyiv had become a staged operation, and the episode was still the main security story from Ukraine.

On 29 May 2018, it was reported that the Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko had been shot dead near his home in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Security Service said the following day, 30 May, that the killing had been staged as part of an operation to catch those who were trying to kill him.

On 30 May, Babchenko himself appeared on live television and stated that the assassination had been staged. The reversal came barely a day after the first reports of his death.

A separate signal from Warsaw

Elsewhere in the region, security planning pointed in a different direction. On 28 May 2018, Poland's Minister of Defence, Mariusz Błaszczak, said he had recently talked with U.S. officials in Washington D.C. about permanently stationing thousands of U.S. troops in Poland. He described the idea as a deterrent against Russia.

The two items were unrelated in their details, but both were part of the security picture in the days before 3 June 2018: in Kyiv, a security-service operation that played out in public view, and in Warsaw, a defence minister openly discussing a lasting American troop presence.