BBC Newsnight: Ukraine issued stark warning as threat from Russia looms
BBC • Getty Edward Lucas issued Ukraine with a stark warning on BBC Newsnight
Edward Lucas shockingly warned on BBC Newsnight Ukraine it may have used its one and only opportunity to escape an immediate threat from Russia and insisted if another assassination is claimed to have taken place the international community might question its legitimacy. He said: “I think the difficulty here is this is a card you can only really play once and I wonder what will happen next time there’s an assassination. “When people are trying to whip up international support and outrage over an assassination and at the back of many people’s minds there will be a question ‘well is this just another very clever intelligence sting’. “It may be the Ukrainians have uncovered something so dramatic that this extraordinary means was necessary.
“But it’s also possible they may have overdone it and we will only really know that when we get more facts.” The security expert added the behaviour from Kiev was not normal when questioned on BBC Newsnight by presenter Evan Davis. However, he ended his argument by identifying the caveat that Ukraine sits incredibly close to Russia and does not enjoy the same luxuries of safety seen in the West. He noted: “This is not normal, this reminds me of accidental death of an anarchist sort of sequel set in Ukraine, there’s an air of heightened unreality about it and I think it’s very easy for us in the West, you know basically pretty safe Salisbury aside, to lecture Ukrainians who really are fighting and dying every week so I don’t want to criticise.
“This is a card you can only really play once” - @edwardlucas on Ukraine’s staged murder of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko #newsnight pic.twitter.com/2OZy9YSvld — BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 30, 2018
“All I’m really saying is the evidence is going to have to be pretty strong to convince people this was the right thing to do.” Mr Lucas praised the work of Ukrainian security forces in their efforts to dispel the threat imposed by Moscow that “clearly killed people in the past”. He added: “First of all I am delighted he is alive and I’m still very angry that the Russian’s were trying to kill him, they didn’t succeed thanks to brilliance of the Ukrainian security services but clearly they have killed people in the past that the Ukrainians are to be believed when they say there was a plot going on and that is very unpleasant.” Anti-Putin journalist Arkady Babchenko shocked the world yesterday when he turned up to a news conference in Ukraine alive after it emerged his death had been staged as part of a desperate attempt to catch a Ukrainian man that had been hired to kill him.
BBC Mr Lucas praised the work of Ukrainian security forces in their efforts to dispel the threat
Vasyl Hrytsak, the chief of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), declared the force had obtained information about a horrifying plot to take down Mr Babchenko and 29 others. He remarked: "We managed not only to break this cynical provocation but also to document the preparation of this shameful crime by Russian special services." The SBU added it had detained a citizen in Ukraine believed to have been recruited to assassinate the Russian journalist.
BBC Mr Lucas said Moscow had 'clearly killed people in the past'