Putin's spies claim to have stopped Ukraine double assassination
Putin’s spies claim to have stopped Ukraine double assassination of leader’s TV star ‘goddaughter’ and his most powerful woman propagandist nicknamed ‘Goebbels in a skirt’
- Ksenia Sobchak, 41, and Margarita Simonyan, 43, were allegedly targetted
- Russian FSB claimed the hits were ordered by Ukraine’s intelligence service
The Russian FSB claimed today to have stopped plans to assassinate Vladimir Putin’s TV star ‘goddaughter’ and his most powerful woman propagandist.
Vladimir Putin’s secret services agency claimed the hits were ordered by Ukraine’s intelligence service which offered £12,700 each to kill Ksenia Sobchak and Margarita Simonyan.
A 22-year-old alleged neo-Nazi Yegor Savalyev was detained in Ryazan, along with five accomplices.
The story is shady and Savalyev was previously reported to be a ‘victim’ of a 2019 FSB ‘provocation’.
Sobchak, 41, knows Putin from her childhood because her late father Anatoly – liberal mayor of St Petersburg – was political mentor to the ex-KGB spy.
The Russian FSB claimed today to have stopped plans to assassinate Vladimir Putin’s TV star ‘goddaughter’ Sobchak (pictured), 41, and his most powerful woman propagandist
Vladimir Putin’s (pictured left) secret services agency claimed the hits were ordered by Ukraine’s intelligence service which offered £12,700 each to kill Ksenia Sobchak and Margarita Simonyan (pictured right)
A prominent TV personality Sobchak, who stood against Putin at the 2018 Russian presidential election after privately talking to him, finished fourth.
Putin attended her Orthodox christening, leading to claims he is her godfather.
She now runs an independent media outlet which is often critical of Putin and the war against Ukraine.
In October she reportedly fled Russia for Belarus before entering Lithuania on foot to avoid arrest hours after police raided her mansion in a prestigious Moscow suburb.
Police said that the search on her home was part of a probe into alleged wrongdoing by her media director, Kirill Sukhanov, who was arrested on charges of extortion a day earlier.
Sobchak at the time rejected the accusations against Sukhanov as ‘ravings and nonsense’ and described his arrest as part of the authorities’ efforts to stifle independent media.
She then reportedly returned to Russia two weeks later, entering the country via a border checkpoint with Latvia.
Simonyan, 43, is a hardline Putin loyalist who has been nicknamed ‘Goebbels in a skirt’.
She is editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, and state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya.
A 22-year-old alleged neo-Nazi Yegor Savalyev (pictured) was detained in Ryazan, along with five accomplices
Savalyev appeared to give a rehearsed confession, saying: ‘I am Mikail Balashov, born 27 March 2005.
‘I live in Moscow. I created a Neonazi gang Paragraph 88 and got [my] underage friends involved in it…
‘I was contacted by Ukraine’s special services…
‘We were offered [to commit] the contract assassination of Margarita Simonyan and Ksenia Sobchak.
‘I….conducted reconnaissance of Margarita Simonyan’s home in order to get money.
‘After that I contacted a curator who was supposed to leave a Kalashnikov automated gun for me and money.
‘When I arrived at the place where the weapon was supposed to be, I was caught by the employees of the [Russian] intelligence service.’
The FSB claimed it had stopped the killing of Sobchak and Simonyan, yet this was doubted by independent oberservers.
‘This is more likely an FSB provocation,’ said one.
‘Members of the Paragraph-88 neo-Nazi group, acting on instructions from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), planned to kill them.’
Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila Narusova (pictured right), and Ksenia Sobchak (pictured second right) in St Petersburg in November 2003
The FSB claimed its officers ‘seized a Kalashnikov assault rifle, cartridges, edged weapons, Nazi symbols, literature, as well as communications equipment and computers with information about the preparation of the assassination attempt.’
Simonyan said: ‘The FSB, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee, detained a group that, by order of Ukraine, was preparing my murder.
‘[They] followed me, knew all my addresses.’
She urged to send them to her fisherman father ‘for re-education – he will make real men out of them’.
Caution News – run by Sobchak – reported that the detained man had spent four years in jail for an ‘extremist’ offence.
Savalyev was appearing in a pro-trial custody hearing in court along with other alleged members of his group.
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