The court sentenced Mikhail Balashov, accused of the attempted murder of Margarita Simonyan, to 25 years in prison. Ria Novosti reports.
The Federal Security Service of Russia reported that together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee, the preparation of the murder of Margarita Simonyan of the media group "Россия сегодня" and the editor-in-chief of RT was prevented by the Ukrainian special services.
According to FSB, the murder of journalist Ksenia Sobchak was also planned.
Members of the "Paragraph-88" neo-Nazi group were arrested in Moscow and Ryazan region, who, according to law enforcement officers, had conducted intelligence on the work and residence addresses of Simonyan and Sobchak.
A "Kalashnik" rifle with bullets, rubber clubs, knives, clubs and handcuffs were found and confiscated from the arrested.
According to FSB data, the arrested persons admitted that they were preparing the assassination attempts on the instructions of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) in return for a promised reward of 1.5 million rubles for each murder.
Let's remind that according to court documents, in 2022, Balashov created a group of nationalists in Moscow. In less than a year, members of the group, including minors, carried out six attacks against migrants and representatives of the LGBT* community, publishing the videos on the Internet in order to promote extremist ideas.
According to the data of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, no later than June 16, 2023, unknown persons offered Balashov to kill Margarita Simonyan for 50 thousand US dollars.
