Margarita Simonyan has issued a public statement on the plot to have her killed, saying she felt sorry for the 18-year-old suspect she said was tricked into the crime, and expressing hope that he would one day repent for his sins.
“…Maybe he will go to the front from prison. And maybe in the trenches life will give him a lesson, and he will serve our country, he will then bitterly regret and repent what he was going to do and thank God that the Lord took his hand away and did not let him do what he wanted to do,” Simonyan said.
She noted that this was not the first foiled plot against her life, and that while the one in April 2022 was “a big shock,” she’s now “used to living with the feeling that someone is after me.”
Simonyan added that there are some things worse than death.
The FSB, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee carried out operations to apprehend members of a neo-Nazi group said to have been offered 1.5 million rubles (about $17,000 US) by Ukrainian military intelligence to kill Simonyan and Russian liberal socialite Ksenia Sobchak.