Moscow court arrests alleged Solovyov ‘assassins’

Basmanny court in Moscow has arrested Vasily Strizhakov and Maksim Druzhinin suspected of preparing an assassination of Vladimir Solovyev, a pro-Putin TV host, according to the court’s media office.

Strizhakov, 41, was convicted twice before: in 2014 for selling 3 grams of marijuana, and in 2010 for threatening a woman at knifepoint. He was sentenced to forced medical treatment on both occasions, reports 112, a Telegram channel.

Druzhinin, 32, has no criminal record and has a job at Russian Railways. Svetlana Sidorkina, his lawyer , claims that the security officers planted several Molotov cocktails into his apartment during the search, which they now use as evidence. “He says that he did not own the bottles with a clear liquid in them,” she said.

In total, six people were detained in this case. The FSB reported that they were members of “a banned neo-Nazi terrorist organization called National Socialism/White Power”. The agency claimed that they had confessed.

NS/WP did not deny they may have had plans to attack the Solovyov. They noted in their statement that their actions are directed against the Russian authorities and their ‘denazification’ policy.

One of the detainees, Vladimir Stepanov, nicknamed ‘Youngster’, jumped out of the window trying to escape arrest and broke both of his legs. He is now in the hospital in serious condition, 112 claims.

According to the Russian Investigative Committee, the detainees owned “certain components required to create an improvised explosive device, the device itself, weapons and ammunition and Nazi symbols, as well as drugs.” In addition, the detectives found “fake Ukrainian passports with misleading personal data, which were planned to be used after the crime would have been committed.”

A video containing the FSB footage is going viral on Telegram. In the video, one of the detainees claims that the assassinations of other propagandists were also discussed among the group members, potential targets being Dmitry Kiselyov, Olga Skabeeva, Yevgeny Popov, Tigran Keosayan and Margarita Simonyan.