Alleged Russian assassination plot uncovers ‘The Sims 3’

On Twitter, the veracity of the sting operation got here into query. “I genuinely believe this is a dumb FSB officer being told to get 3 SIMs,” tweeted Eliot Higgins, founding father of the investigative analysis unit Bellingcat, which has coated Russia extensively.

SIM playing cards are small chips utilized in telephones, which might be helpful to would-be assassins. Pictured in video footage of the raid, in contrast, had been boxed copies of content material packs for the life simulation online game “The Sims 3,” together with what gave the impression to be “The Sims 3: Outdoor Living Stuff,” “The Sims 3: Master Suit Stuff” and a 3rd content material pack The Washington Post couldn’t determine.

“The Sims 3″ is a game in which players control and customize virtual avatars going about their days. Players can build houses for their Sims, dress them up, and put them in all manner of wacky situations.

How The Sims navigated 20 years of change to become one of the most successful franchises ever

Video footage also showed FSB officers thumbing through a book dedicated to the reader with the phrase “signature illegible” scrawled on the backside in Russian, elevating additional issues concerning the sting’s credibility. One Russian journalist on Twitter identified, nonetheless, that “signature illegible” was the genuine call-sign of a web based right-wing determine.

Still, he tweeted, “It, of course, doesn’t make the whole story convincing.”

The assault, President Putin claimed, was orchestrated by Ukraine’s safety service, the SBU, in league with Western companions. In a press release on the social media platform Telegram, the SBU denied plotting an assassination try, which they described as a fantasy concocted by Russian Special Forces.

“The FSB in particular have a reputation for PR-grabbing busts with very flimsy causes, and an assassination of [Solovyev] definitely fits that profile,” mentioned Aric Toler, director of coaching and analysis at Bellingcat, in a message to The Post. The particulars that increase questions, he mentioned, usually embody objects that seem to have been bought very just lately.

“The ‘Sims 3’ thing is just the most hilarious version of this,” Toler wrote. “It is completely nonsensical, yet also makes perfect sense.”

According to the FSB, the goal of the obvious assassination try was Vladimir Solovyev, a outstanding Russian media persona who’s at present the topic of each European Union and United Kingdom sanctions. Solovyev is finest generally known as the host of a chat present on Russian state TV. Until just lately, he additionally broadcast on YouTube, although in March, the corporate terminated the speaking head’s account, discovering it in violation of YouTube’s phrases of service.

In 2019, Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny revealed that Solovyev, who incessantly derides the decadence and hypocrisy of the West, owns two Italian villas.

In latest weeks, Solovyev turned his consideration to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with Solovyev ominously predicting that if something had been to occur to him, it could be on the Ukrainian President’s orders. The SBU’s assertion in contrast Solovyev to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and mentioned he would stand trial for his crimes earlier than a global court docket after Ukraine’s victory over Russia.

Russian news companies reported that different Russian state propagandists, together with Russia Today editor in chief Margarita Simonyan, had been additionally targets of the alleged assassins. The FSB didn’t determine the folks it had detained, however mentioned they had been cooperating with investigators.

Opinion: Vladimir Kara-Murza from jail: Russia will probably be free. I’ve by no means been so certain.

Monday’s sting operation harks again to the 2019 arrest of Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov beneath suspicious circumstances. Golunov, who labored for the online-only news outlet Meduza, was arrested for possession and sale of medication. His supporters claimed the proof police gathered from his condo had been planted on the scene, and the costs fabricated. Several days later, Golunov was launched.

Since then, Russian restrictions on unbiased media — significantly within the wake of the invasion — have pressured many journalists, together with Meduza’s employees, to flee the nation. Last week, the author, activist and Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested in Russia and sentenced to fifteen days in jail after criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in an interview with CNN. He faces a extra severe 15 12 months cost.