Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reports to have prevented the plot to “assassinate RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak”, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti writes, citing the FSB.
The security service claims that neo-Nazis from the Paragraph 88 group were detained in Moscow and the Ryazan region. The FSB says that the group was preparing assassination attempts on the two women “on orders from the Security Service of Ukraine for the reward of 1.5 million rubles (€14,778) for each assassination” and was surveilling the home residencies and offices of both Simonyan and Sobchak.
“A Kalashnikov rifle with cartridges, rubber batons, knives, brass knuckles, and handcuffs were seized from the detainees,” the statement reads.
Soon after, RT posted footage of an 18-year-old Moscow resident being interrogated: he was detained over the charges of preparing the assassinations of Sobchak and Simonyan. According to the young man in the video, who introduced himself as Mikhail Balashov, he created a neo-Nazi group Paragraph-88 and got minors involved in it. After the creation of the group, he was allegedly contacted by the Ukrainian special services, which ordered assassinations of Simonyan and Sobchak.
After today’s detentions, Paragraph-88 told Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti (a news project created by Sobchak) that the group was self-dissolving and that its members were planning to join other organisations.
According to the channel, six people were brought to Moscow’s Basmanny Court in connection with the “assassination attempts”: the aforementioned Balashov, as well as men with last names Savelyev, Novik, Zakharov, Gusev, and Emelyanov.
Media outlet The Insider reports, citing one of the members of the neo-Nazi association National Socialism / White Power Crew, which is recognised as a terrorist organisation in Russia, that the detained men are being tortured to beat out confessions out of them about preparations to carry out terrorist attacks, interacting with other groups of the NS/WP Crew, and connections to Ukraine.
“They’re being electrocuted, strangled, one of them (it seems) had his arm broken,” the source told The Insider.
Mediazona earlier pointed out a Telegram post on the Oderint, Dum Metuant channel, affiliated with NS/WP Crew. The post says that in the early hours of 14 July several associates of the channel were captured, the majority of them in Moscow. They are currently being tortured, according to the post.
