Russia has thwarted a plot to assassinate one of the Kremlin's chief propagandists, Vladimir Putin claimed today.
Putin said his security services thwarted a 'terrorist group' plotting to kill a 'notable Russian TV journalist', before state media announced the target was Vladimir Solovyev and claimed the plotters were 'neo-Nazis' acting on orders from Kyiv.
FSB agents arrested members of the group Monday, state news agency RIA Novosti claimed, while seizing bombs, Molotov cocktails, handguns, a rifle, and grenades.
The announcement came just hours after Solovyev appeared on his regular Sunday night talk show to threaten the West with nuclear weapons.
'On the subject of us using nuclear weapons,' Solovyev told his viewers, 'let me remind them of the phrase used by our supreme commander-in-chief...
'"Why do we need a world in which there is no Russia?"
'So if anyone thinks we're bluffing, they should pay attention to the behaviour of our supreme commander. He never bluffs.'
Addressing state prosecutors on Monday morning about priorities for the courts amid his invasion of Ukraine, Putin brought up the assassination plot.
'This morning, the Federal Security Service stopped the activities of a terrorist group that planned to attack and kill one famous Russian TV journalist,' Putin said.
'They have moved to terror - to preparing the murder of our journalists.'
A short time later, state news wire RIA Novosti published an article identifying Solovyev as the intended target.
According to state media, the FSB had 'detained a group of members of the [banned] neo-Nazi terrorist organization National Socialism / White Power.
During searches, police seized explosive devices, eight Molotov cocktails, six pistols, a swan-off rifle, a grenade and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition.
State media also claimed to have uncovered drugs, fake Ukrainian passports, and Ukrainian nationalist literature.
RIA said the arrested men - acting on order from Kyiv - had plotted to kill Solovyev before fleeing overseas.
The channel did not say where exactly the arrests took place, or how many people were arrested in total.
Solovyev has been one of the Kremlin's leading voices in the information war against Ukraine - pushing Putin's narrative of a 'special military operation' to 'de-Nazify' the country on the Russian public after independent media was largely shut down.
Alongside the likes of foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, spokesman Maria Zakharova, and UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, he has also led denials that Russian troops are targeting Ukrainian civilians.
According to their accounts, atrocities are being carried out by Ukraine and its Western allies as 'provocations' that are being blamed on Russia to justify further military action.