(Reuters) – A Moscow court on Saturday charged seven people “motivated by national hatred” with killing two prominent Russian journalists in a Ukrainian-backed plot, Russian news agency TASS said.
The court approved the detention until September 14 on criminal charges of “hooliganism” of five minors born in 2005 and 2006 and two men who it said were part of an organized group, TASS said.
TASS said Russia’s FSB security service on Friday arrested an unknown number of people who carried out reconnaissance near the homes and workplaces of journalists Margarita Simonyan, head of state media RT, and Ksenia Sobchak, who ran against President Vladimir Putin in 2018.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in televised remarks that Russia was living in an absurd “constructed mythology”.
Asked about the case in an interview, Podolyak downplayed its significance, saying journalists “play no significant role” in the war, or in Russia’s loss of positions on the world stage.
The Interfax news agency quoted the FSB as saying the detainees had admitted planning attacks on the two women in the name of Ukraine and had been promised a reward of 1.5 million rubles ($16,620 ) for each.
Simonyan, a staunch supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, posted a message on Telegram regarding the alleged plot, urging the security services to “Keep working, brothers!”
Sobchak, whose late father Anatoly Sobchak was Putin’s political mentor, said if the assassination plans were true, then “thanks to all the services involved for their work”.
In a post on her Telegram channel, which often broadcasts reports criticizing Russian government policy, she added that if the reports were wrong, “and the idea was just to put me and Simonyan in the same sentence, then it’s the usual nastiness.
“In any case, I want to point out that all terror is bad, no ifs and buts,” she added.
Over the past year, bombings inside Russia have killed prominent Russian pro-war figures, journalist Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. Russia blamed their killings on Ukraine, while Kyiv denied this and presented them as evidence of Russian infighting.
In May, a prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was injured in a car bomb attack that killed his driver. Investigators said a suspect was arrested and admitted to acting on behalf of Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by David Holmes, Christina Fincher and Diane Craft)