During a Monday meeting at Moscow’s Prosecutor General’s Office, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a shocking allegation and announced the arrest of several suspected assassins allegedly plotting to kill prominent Russian state TV journalist and ardent Putin loyalist Vladimir Solovyov.
“This morning, organs of the FSB stopped the activities of a terrorist group that was planning to attack and murder a prominent Russian TV journalist,” Putin stated, claiming that the conspiracy was orchestrated by “high-ranking diplomatic officials in Europe and Russia” and the United States” seeking to divide Russian society and “destroy Russia from within”. Putin claimed that the West’s failure to assert itself on the information front of the war in Ukraine prompted him “to resort to terror, to arrange for our journalists to be assassinated.” He added: “We know the names of the sponsors from Western intelligence agencies, first of all, of course, from the United States CIA, which works with the security services of Ukraine.”
Russia’s notorious counterintelligence service FSB released video of the arrests, as well as so-called “behind-the-scenes” footage of agents searching and seizing property allegedly found in the suspects’ apartment, which was released in full by state media RIA Novosti by telegram. Footage showed a range of items laid out in the apartment, including a photograph of Adolf Hitler, six pristine-looking Ukrainian passports, a blonde wig and brand new T-shirts with swastikas that appeared to have fresh creases from the last shipment.
But the seemingly brand-new items weren’t the only odd elements seen in the FSB footage. In the original video, three copies of a Sims video game were shown laid out on the bed, as well as a book with an ominous inscription that reads in part, “Kill to live and live to kill,” signed with the name “Signature unclear.”
Social media users were quick to point out that the SIMS game and “signature unclear” could be signs the arrest was part of an FSB hoax gone wrong, pointing out that the guidelines for the Crime scene setup may have involved inserting three SIM cards and signing the book with an unrecognizable signature – and that these instructions may have been misunderstood or taken too literally by the agents. Perhaps realizing their agents failed, official videos posted by the FSB on its YouTube channel excluded the book and blurred the images of the SIMS video games.
Despite obvious gaps in the official account of the so-called assassination, the Kremlin appears to be sticking to its story. On Monday, Alexander Bortnikov, director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, told Russian broadcaster Rossiya-1 that a group of six Russian neo-Nazis were indeed planning to kill state television presenter Vladimir Solovyov on orders from the Ukrainian security services.
In his interview with state media company RIA Novosti, Solovyov said he did not realize he was being followed and profusely thanked the FSB for saving his life. But the foundation for Monday’s allegations seems to have been laid days earlier: Two days before the arrests, Solovyov claimed that he had been molested by strangers while he was jogging in the morning.
“I was jogging down the embankment today when two fat bastards rode past me on their bikes shouting ‘Glory to Ukraine,'” he said during his show Solovyov Live. “They were too scared to stop and get slapped straight in their greasy faces by me. We’re going to track them down and we’ll find them, no question, because it’s all on video… We’ve got to catch all the bastards over here.”
Solovyov, a vocal supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, groundlessly accused Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy of leading the alleged assassination attempt on him and claimed he was targeted because he is a Jewish journalist. Rossiya-1 reported that the “Neo-Nazi assassins” admitted planning the murder of other state media figures and showed a clip of an unnamed conspirator, whose face was blurred, saying they also planned to kill the head of the state media state television, Dmitry Kiselyov, RT Margarita Simonyan, her husband Tigran Keosayan and pro-Putin pundits Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov.
During a Monday night broadcast of the state television program 60 Minutes, Olga Skabeeva concluded: “Ukraine has officially become a sponsor of terrorism.” In early April, Zelenskyy, during his phone call with US President Joe Biden, called on the United States to name Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Today’s accusations seek to throw that accusation back into the folds of Ukraine.
Solovyov opened his evening show on Monday and seemed downright dizzy as he spoke about the alleged conspiracy to assassinate him. He chuckled at having to take calls and gave interviews about the arrests, and laughed at how the President of Ukraine must have orchestrated the plan out of professional jealousy. As it turns out, Solovyov doesn’t seem to take the alleged assassinations half as seriously as the seizure of his Italian villas by Western sanctions.