Assassination attempt on Sobchak and Simonyan: what is known about the new defendants, details of the criminal case

Three new defendants have appeared in the criminal case about the attempted murder of RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak. One of those detained is an eighth-grade student.

The case also involves a college student and an installer. The young men were detained on May 7 for hooliganism and were given a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions, in particular, a ban on leaving the house at night.

The Investigative Committee of Russia has detained tied up with the activities of the neo-Nazi group “Paragraph-88”.

FSB prevented assassination attempt in summer 2023

Officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia prevented an assassination attempt on Simonyan and Sobchak in July 2023. According to the agency, the crime was prepared by Ukrainian special services. At the same time, members of the “Paragraph-88” group conducted reconnaissance at the addresses of the journalists’ work and residence; they were detained in Moscow and the Ryazan region. Among them were also minors.

During interrogations, they stated that they were promised a reward of 1.5 million rubles for each crime. A Kalashnikov assault rifle, knives, brass knuckles, rubber truncheons and handcuffs were confiscated from the detainees. Also confiscated were chevrons and flags with Nazi symbols, Nazi literature, communications equipment and computers with information confirming the criminal intentions of the suspects.

Simonyan, commenting on what happened, celebratedthat this was not the first assassination attempt on her. “Now, over the course of this year, I have become accustomed to living with the feeling of being a hare in a field, you know, with someone running after them with a gun,” she admitted.

According to Simonyan, she feels this way: there can be no two deaths, one is inevitable. She also expressed regret over the 18-year-old boy’s attempt to organize an assassination attempt on her.

Sobchak, in turn, thanked law enforcement officers for preventing an assassination attempt on her, adding that “any terror is evil, no buts.”

Kyiv has declared its lack of interest in the assassination attempt on Sobchak and Simonyan

Adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office Mykhailo Podolyak stated that Kyiv is not involved in preparing the assassination attempts on the journalists. According to him, the Ukrainian authorities do not benefit from an attack on Simonyan and Sobchak, since “they do not influence anything.”

“We definitely don’t need them. They don’t play any important role in what’s happening today and within the framework [российской спецоперации на Украине] in general, and in the context of Russia’s loss of positions in a global sense,” he noted.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, in turn, called the assassination attempt on the journalists yet another confirmation of the terrorist nature of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime. As other examples, she cited the terrorist attack against journalist Daria Dugina in August 2022, the assassination attempt on Tsargrad TV channel founder Konstantin Malofeev in March 2023, the explosion of a statuette that took the life of war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky in April 2023, and the serious injury of writer and public figure Zakhar Prilepin.