2023-07-15 17:28:00
Director of the state news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan. / Photo: AFP.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that it prevented a assassination attempt against the director of the state news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, commissioned by the Ukrainian security services.
“The FSB, together with the Investigative Committee and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, prevented the preparation by the Ukrainian special services of the murder of Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the RT TV channel and the Rossiya Segodnya international news agency” , indicated a statement from the organization cited by the Sputnik news agency.
“They arrested a group that, by order of the Ukraine, was preparing my assassination. He followed me, he knew all my addresses,” the director of the media group said on Twitter.
According to the Russian services, an attack on the journalist had also been planned and former Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak.
According to that statement, on July 14, “members of the neo-Nazi Paragraf-88 group” were arrested in Moscow and in the Ryazan region, carrying out reconnaissance tasks on “the work addresses and residences of the objects of the attacks.”
The note also specifies that they were following instructions from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and that they were to receive “a reward of 1.5 million rubles” (about $16,600) for each of the victims.”
“In the course of the investigation, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, 90 cartridges for the same, knives, brass knuckles, rubber clubs, handcuffs, flags with Nazi symbols, Nazi literature, as well as communication equipment and computers with information that confirms their criminal intentions were confiscated from the detainees,” the FSB said.
Last year, that Russian agency accused Ukraine of preparing a attack on Russian journalist and television presenter Vladimir Soloviov.
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