A Federal Security Service (FSB) report on Friday revealed that a group of Russian neo-Nazis, allegedly guided by Ukrainian intelligence, was foiled while planning a bomb attack against the leadership of Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor.

In raids conducted last Saturday across Moscow, Ufa, Novosibirsk, and Yaroslavl, agents targeted seven members of the network. According to the FSB, a man in his early 20s identified as the ringleader was killed in Moscow after opening fire on officers attempting to apprehend him.

Footage released by the FSB showed that at least two suspects were female and all were young adults. During interviews, they stated they were gathering personal information about Roskomnadzor head Andrey Lipov and his deputies and discussing methods to attack their vehicles.

Law enforcement seized neo-Nazi symbols during searches, including hand-drawn swastikas and an Imperial Russian flag with a white supremacist pattern. Officers also recovered weapons such as a silenced handgun used by the ringleader in the firefight, a hand grenade, and a 1-kilogram homemade bomb.

The FSB alleged that the group targeted Roskomnadzor officials due to the agency’s role in restricting foreign-based apps, particularly Telegram. This policy, which Russian authorities claim is necessary for national security reasons, has sparked controversy in Russia where Telegram is highly popular.

Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder who moved from Russia to the United Arab Emirates, is a vocal advocate of maximum free speech and has faced legal challenges with governments worldwide, including France where he was charged with assisting crimes involving Telegram users.

The FSB maintains that foreign messaging platforms that fail to cooperate with Russian investigations are de facto tools of Ukrainian special services, used to radicalize youth and recruit citizens for criminal activities such as targeted assassinations.