Russia's foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned Kiev's staging of the murder of Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko, which it said was aimed at discrediting the Russian authorities.
"We're glad that a Russian citizen is alive," the ministry said, but added that "now the true motives are beginning to be revealed for this staging, which is totally obviously yet another anti-Russian provocation."
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was "great news" that Babchenko was alive but on Twitter she slammed the "propagandistic effect" of the set-up.
Reporters Without Borders also condemned the faked death.
"It is pathetic and regrettable that the Ukrainian police have played with the truth, whatever their motive... for the stunt," Christophe Deloire, the head of the Paris-based media watchdog, told AFP.
And Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, a former colleague of Babchenko, also questioned the value of the operation.
"To me, it's crossing a line big time. Babchenko is a journalist not a policeman, for Christ sake, and part of our job is trust, whatever Trump & Putin say about fake news," he wrote on Twitter.
"I'm glad he is alive, but he undermined even further the credibility of journalists and the media," he added.
Babchenko, a dissident journalist who was reported murdered in Kiev, dramatically reappeared alive on Wednesday in the middle of a briefing by Ukrainian security officials about his own killing. He said had been part of a special Ukrainian operation to thwart a Russian attempt on his life.
A number of Kremlin critics have been killed in Ukraine in recent years, with one gunned down on a Kiev street in broad daylight and another whose car exploded.
Babchenko fought in Russia's two Chechen campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s before becoming a war correspondent and author. He repeatedly said he faced death threats.
He has contributed to a number of media outlets including top opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta and is an avid blogger, accusing Russian authorities of killing Kremlin critics and unleashing wars in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.
He wrote about his experience as a young soldier in the Chechen campaigns in a book published in English under the title "One Soldier's War".
Babchenko left Russia in February 2017 after receiving threats, living first in the Czech Republic, then in Israel, before moving to Kiev.
He has hosted a program on the Crimean Tatar TV station ATR for the past year.
Babchenko made a name for himself with his poignant reports from the front lines, including the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people.
In recent years his increasingly bombastic posts pushed the boundaries of good taste and some of his colleagues and followers stopped reading him on Facebook.
