Moscow (CNN) The Russian journalist who staged his own murder as part of an elaborate plot to catch an alleged assassin has told of how he watched reports of his death from a Ukrainian morgue.

Arkady Babchenko said his death was faked with the help of a makeup artist and pigs' blood, in a ploy that Ukrainian security services say was necessary to protect his life.

Speaking at a press conference in Kiev, the anti-Kremlin journalist described how he was shown how to fall as if he had been shot. He put on a T-shirt that had been shot through to show bullet wounds and was then covered with pigs' blood.

After his wife called emergency services, Babchenko said, he was transferred to an ambulance. "Measures were taken to resuscitate me but it was not successful and I died, where the doctor established death."

Babchenko was then taken to a morgue where he was "still pretending to be dead," he said. Once he was inside the morgue and the doors were closed he "came back to life." He then watched news reports about his death, "what a great guy I was," he said.

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