Main defendant in the case over the attempted assassination of Margarita Simonyan sentenced to 25 years

The main defendant in the case over the attempted assassination of Margarita Simonyan has been sentenced to 25 years

RIA Novosti reports this.

The other ten people convicted in the case received sentences ranging from six years in a juvenile correctional colony to 18 years in prison, notes Vot Tak. Among them is one girl.

🔵According to the security forces, in 2022 Mikhail Balashov created a cell of National Socialist supporters. They began carrying out attacks on migrants and LGBT people, posting videos online for the “propaganda of extremism.” The FSB claimed the group was called “Paragraph 88.”

🔵In 2023, “unidentified persons” promised 22-year-old Balashov $50,000 for the murder of RT head Margarita Simonyan, and he, together with Savelyev, surveilled her house in Moscow for several days.

🔵According to an Investigative Committee ruling, Balashov was detained on the evening of July 13, 2023, when he broke into someone else’s garage to retrieve an AK-74 assault rifle and ammunition from a stash. In the time before the arrest, according to the Investigative Committee, Balashov and Savelyev managed to receive only 25,000 rubles, which they collected from two dead drops.

🔵The FSB announced that it had prevented an attempt on Simonyan and Ksenia Sobchak (she is not mentioned in the ruling) on July 15. As a result, eight people were detained in Moscow and the Ryazan region. According to investigators, they were “conducting reconnaissance at the work and residential addresses” of Simonyan and Sobchak “on instructions from the SBU.”

🔵Later, a witness told Mediazona that security forces tortured the detainees with a stun gun and beat them in order to obtain confessions.

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