Russian 'Proof' of Ukrainian Assassination Attempt Gets Mercilessly Ridiculed

According to BBC's Francis Scarr — who monitors Russian state TV "so you don't have to" — the FSB (the KGB's successor) said on Monday that it had uncovered a dastardly plot to kill pro-Putin TV host Vladimir Solovyov, and had arrested six would-be assassins.

They claim to have seized "one IED, eight Molotov cocktails, six Makarov pistols, a sawed-off shot gun, a grenade, over 1,000 rounds of ammo, drugs, forged Ukrainian passports, and nationalist literature and paraphernalia", Scarr reported — but it was the photo of the "Ukrainian neo-Nazi starter pack" that had most eyebrows raising.

Alongside the usual items secret Nazi assassins carry around — like bright red swastika t-shirts and photos of Hitler — was harder-to-explain contraband: 3 copies of the video game The Sims.

The riddle of why the killers would be carrying around three copies of the 2009 life simulation game confounded the internet for minutes, until one theory quickly became the forerunner: whoever set up the false flag photo shoot was told to include three sims — as in sim cards from cellphones — and had made the rather embarrassing blunder.

More evidence that the Russian equivalent of Austin Powers was in charge of the staged haul came in a video broadcast by state news agency RIA, which purported to show a handwritten note also recovered at the scene.

It was signed "подпись неразборчива" — literally "signature illegible".

Solovyov meanwhile was taking the sinister plan by Mr. Illegible and his fellow assassins very seriously; he announced on his show that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had ordered the hit because he had once applied for a presenter job at the Russian station, but wasn't talented enough, so got rejected.

"Zelenskyy's been talking about it for years, I've haunted him for a long time," Solovyov bragged. "Obviously he's still got a complex."