Arkady Babchenko rose from the dead on Wednesday, to the joy of those who know and love him. The truth, long a casualty of the war that began in Ukraine four years ago, will not recover so easily. The announcement that the “murder” of the exiled Russian journalist had been staged provoked shock and anger as well as relief. The emotion of his sympathisers was mirrored by evident glee on the part of pro-Russian social media users, quick to exploit its wider potential by renewing attacks on the “Skripal fairytale” and warning: “Next time you show me photos from Syria by ‘White Helmets’ I will show photo of ‘dead Arkady Babchenko killed by Putin’.”

The “death” was concocted by the SBU, Ukraine’s security service. The fear Mr Babchenko has lived with, as an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, was not. He fled Russia in February 2017, writing that it was “a country I no longer feel safe in”. Many other journalists from his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment block. Critics and opponents of the Russian government have died well beyond its borders: a British public inquiry into Alexander Litvinenko’s 2006 death in London concluded that he was probably murdered on the orders of Vladimir Putin. Ukraine never looked like the safest home; in 2016, the journalist Pavel Sheremet – a friend of the assassinated Russian politician Boris Nemtsov and a critic of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents as well as the leader of his own Belarus – died in a car blast in Kiev.

Mr Babchenko participated in this sting not as a reporter but as a potential victim. (He wanted first to disappear to the north pole – but “[Sergei] Skripal also tried to hide”, he told reporters; “You are thinking about how to survive.”) Unfortunately, that will not prevent the unscrupulous from exploiting his involvement to cast doubt upon media independence and portray journalists as complicit with security services and willing to bend the truth more generally. That insults not only Russian journalists under intense pressure, but all those risking their lives to report: according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 18 have been murdered worldwide since the year began.

The real questions are about the decisions made by Ukrainian authorities. The SBU has argued, so far not convincingly, that faking Mr Babchenko’s death was the only way to prevent his assassination, arrest the man who commissioned the hit and capture evidence of its organisers. The plan’s elaborate nature is all the more striking set against their failure to find the killer of Sheremet, and the considerable questions surrounding his death: last year a documentary alleged that an agent working for the SBU witnessed the planting of the car bomb. Worse still was the stagey delight with which officials revealed their plot, evidently feeling that they had got one over on Moscow. The president, Petro Poroshenko, lauded a “brilliant operation” – though diplomats are now sounding a more defensive note.

At best, the importance of the ends blinded the service to the danger of the means. Far from damaging Moscow’s narrative, they have handed its propagandists a gift. Even if they produce apparently cast-iron evidence of high-level Russian involvement – and so far there has been nothing approaching that – how many will take heed? If it is possible to fake a murder, why not audio recordings or documents? The sting has rebounded upon them. Many will be inclined not only to treat Ukrainian statements with rightful scepticism in future, but perhaps to dismiss them outright.

Unfortunately, Kiev’s actions have not only damaged the already very limited trust in the Ukrainian government, but risk hurting trust more broadly. At a time of cynicism and deliberate manipulation, when “fake news” is the rallying cry of those seeking to bury facts, and when lies are proven to spread faster than the truth, such injuries are more serious than ever. One Ukrainian MP compared the plot to Sherlock Holmes faking his own death “to effectively investigate difficult and complicated crimes”. Apparently he, like the SBU, is hazy about the importance of the line between fact and fiction. But when they are so careless, others pay.