The "Ukrainian saboteurs" killed by the FSB turned out to be airsoft players from Voronezh – fans of role-playing games based on the computer game STALKER, the journalists of The Moscow Times found out . The FSB video about the “liquidation of saboteurs” was distributed by the Russian federal media on November 23, the special services claim that they were allegedly preparing to attack energy facilities in the border Voronezh.
Journalists found profiles of the killed on social networks, and sources in the Voronezh airsoft community confirmed their identities. One of those killed was named Vladimir Kotovsky. The name of the other is unknown, he bore the pseudonym Stalker Phosgene. The publication notes that the clothes in the photographs of a man with the nickname Stalker Phosgen match the clothes on the murdered man from the FSB video. One of the sources showed reporters a social media ad posted by Stalker Phosgene for the sale of an airsoft rifle. The room in the photo in the ad matches the interior of the room in the FSB video footage.
In the FSB video of the inspection of the premises of the alleged saboteurs, a notebook with the inscription “accounting for the personnel of the Svoboda group” and a banner with an emblem in the form of a green wolf’s head in profile and the inscription “Will” are visible. This emblem belongs to the Svoboda group from the Ukrainian computer game STALKER, the interlocutors of the publication from among the fans of the game explained.
In the Vesti program on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, the dead were called Ukrainian terrorists, and the Svoboda banner from a computer game was covered up and said that it was a symbol of the Ukrainian Volya party, founded by the “civilian sector of Euromaidan”. “Flag of the far-right nationalist party Volia. The far-right banners on the Kiev Maidan had such banners … Who was their customer, it’s clear and so, ”Vesti correspondent Alexander Revunov said in a report.
According to one of The Moscow Times sources, those killed were “strange characters”: “Phosgene was an anarchist, a rebel and supported Ukraine. Banned many times from games due to rule violations. Kotovsky is an ordinary techie, a hard worker with his own plans for life. I was a supporter of Navalny,” he said.