KYIV, June 5 - A purported “hit list” of 47 people - mainly journalists and political activists - that had been allegedly ordered for assassination by the Russian interests was Tuesday posted online by Ukrainian news website.

Ukraine’s security service SBU said last week it had obtained a secret target list after recently foiling a plot to assassinate dissident Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kyiv.

The SBU on Tuesday declined to confirm the authenticity of the published list, but some journalists mentioned in it had been already contacted by SBU to arrange their safety, which de-facto confirms it’s authenticity.

The Kremlin did not comment on the list, but it had denied any involvement after Ukraine accused it of ordering the assassination of Babchenko before he showed up alive at a press conference the following day.

Three journalists on the list who spoke with RFE/RL on the condition that their names be withheld due to the potential threat to their lives and because the SBU had them sign a nondisclosure agreement.

They confirmed the list published by Strana.ua was similar to the one they had been shown by the SBU but said it had some slight differences, including variations in the order of the names and some spellings. All of them noted that Babchenko’s name was not on the list.

Yevgeniy Kiselyov, a veteran Russian journalist and TV news presenter at Ukraine’s Pryamiy TV, a network that is supportive of President Petro Poroshenko, was among the few who spoke on the record about being on the list. He told RFE/RL he believed the list was real and that he was unsurprised his name turned up on it but that it did not rattle him.

Kiselyov, who moved to Ukraine in 2008 after he was pushed out of Russia’s media scene, and his Pryamiy colleague Matvey Ganapolskiy, also a Russian who relocated here following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and was given Ukrainian citizenship, were the first two journalists on the alleged list to come forward after authorities upped the count from 30 to 47 on June 1 to say they had been informed and offered state security.

“I got used to watching my back,” Kiselyov said. “I always assumed that I can be on some kind of a hit list.” (rfe/ez)