The attempted murder was part of a Ukrainian campaign to radicalize young people in Russia, investigators believe
© FSB of Russia
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, the Federal Security Service
(FSB) reported on Friday.
A total of seven members of the network
were targeted in a series of raids in Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and
Yaroslavl last Saturday, the statement said. 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, the agency said.
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 and discussed 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. Officers
also found a collection of weapons, including a silenced handgun that
the ringleader reportedly used 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 the use of foreign-based apps,
particularly the Telegram messenger service. The policy, which the
government says is necessary for national security reasons, 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, infamously including France, where he was charged with assisting crimes in which alleged perpetrators used the messenger to communicate.
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 the youth and recruit citizens
susceptible to coercion for various crimes, including targeted
assassinations.