MOSCOW (Reuters) - Alexander Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), said Ukrainian allegations the FSB was behind the killing of a dissident Russian journalist in Kiev were nonsense and a provocation, the Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday.

Arkady Babchenko, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday where he lived in exile. He fled Russia after he received threats for saying he did not mourn the victims of a Russian defence ministry plane crash in 2016.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in a social media posting late on Tuesday he was convinced that what he called “the Russian totalitarian machine” had not forgiven Babchenko for what Groysman called his honesty, a charge the Russian foreign minister rejected on Wednesday.