Russia accuses Ukraine of plot to ‘murder’ pro-Kremlin media figures
- Russia says it foiled a plot to assassinate pro-Kremlin TV anchor Vladimir Solovyov and others, on orders from Ukraine
- Other targets were said to include the managing director of state media company RT as well as RT’s editor-in-chief
Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, announced the detention of six individuals who, it alleges, were plotting to assassinate leading figures in Russia’s state media on the orders of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told state prosecutors at a televised meeting on Monday that a terrorist group intending to murder television presenter Vladimir Solovyov, among others, had been neutralised in a special counterterrorism operation.
SBU officials in Kyiv declined to comment on what they described as the “fantasies of the Russian intelligence services”.
Solovyov, who has been sanctioned by the EU as a “propagandist” and had villas seized by Italian financial police, is one of the most important supporters of the Kremlin line on Russian state television and is regarded as a Russian propagandist by the Ukrainian government.
The managing director of the state media company RT (formerly Russia Today), Dmitry Kiselyov, and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, were also named as potential targets of the group, along with presenter and commentator Olga Skabeyeva.
According to the state investigating committee in Moscow, six Russian members of a “neo-Nazi” splinter group have been detained and explosives, firearms and grenades have been seized.