Russia, which has been sanctioned and widely condemned over its invasion of Ukraine in 2014, used the news to flip the narrative and cast Ukraine as the aggressor. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, quickly called the episode a “masquerade” conducted for “propaganda” purposes. Konstantin Kosachyov, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council's foreign-affairs committee, called it a “provocation” by the Ukrainian government, according to the Russian newswire Interfax. Alec Luhn, a journalist based in Russia, worried that the operation would bolster Moscow’s characterization of Kiev as “deceitful and hapless.” “Babchenko’s staged murder is basically doing their job for them,” Luhn observed. Various journalists’-rights organizations were incensed—the Committee to Protect Journalists called the operation “extreme” and asked for answers. Reporters Without Borders expressed “its deepest indignation after discovering the manipulation of the Ukrainian secret services” and said “it is always very dangerous for a government to play with the facts.”

Garry Kasparov, the Russian chessmaster-turned anti-Putin activist, saw it differently. Speaking at the annual Oslo Freedom Forum—where, hours before, still thinking Babchenko had died, an opera was performed in Babchenko’s honor—Kasparov said the Ukrainian operation marked the first time that Putin’s tool of “fake news was being used against him.” He described the staged murder as “probably the most successful operation in the post-Soviet Union,” and joked that “people who are resurrected have a track record of doing great things.”

The security operation was elaborate. Ukrainian officials even confirmed Babchenko’s death to various media outlets, released photos of him lying facedown in blood, and installed a memorial plaque in his honor on a wall of slain journalists in Kiev. (The plaque was removed on Wednesday.) Not even Babchenko’s wife appeared to be in on it. “Special apologies to my wife, Olechka—there was no other option,” Babchenko said during Wednesday’s press conference. “The operation was under preparation for two months.”

Despite the criticism, Ukrainian police and government officials declared the operation a success. Vasily Gritsak, the head of the Ukrainian security service, told reporters on Wednesday that the investigation had been launched after Babchenko began receiving death threats. It is not clear what sparked them, but he fled Russia in 2016 after learning that the Kremlin was angry at him for saying in a Facebook post that he did not mourn the victims of a Russian defense ministry plane crash that year, according to Haaretz. By Wednesday, officials had detained one suspect: a former fighter based in eastern Ukraine who was allegedly paid $30,000 by Russian authorities to kill Babchenko.