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The security agency reports that it has detained four people allegedly working for Ukraine’s intelligence services
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said it foiled several assassination attempts on high-ranking military officials. The Russian authorities claim that the planned attacks were masterminded by Ukrainian intelligence services.
In a press release on Thursday, the FSB said it had “foiled a series of assassination attempts on the lives of high-ranking military personnel taking part in the Special Military Operation and their families [that were being] prepared by Ukrainian special service operatives.” According to the agency, it detained four Russian nationals in connection with the alleged plots.
One of them is said to have arrived in Moscow from Ukraine via Moldova and Georgia last month under the guise of a deportation procedure. The security agency released footage of an interrogation of the man, in which he recounts how he and his wife moved to Ukraine in 2020 “in search of a better life.” However, the couple soon found themselves pressed for cash and harassed by the immigration authorities, the person in the video says. The suspect claims that Ukrainian intelligence officers contacted them and eventually recruited them for an assassination plot in Russia.
According to the FSB, the individual retrieved an explosive device as well as video surveillance equipment from a cache in Moscow Region, and was supposed to plant the bomb under a senior Russian military officer’s car.
The statement said that another Russian citizen was arrested for conducting surveillance on senior Russian military officers at the behest of Ukrainian special services. Two more individuals were apprehended after being instructed by their supposed Ukrainian handlers to hand over an explosive device camouflaged as a document file folder to a senior Russian military official.
According to the press release, several criminal cases were launched, with the suspects facing life in prison if found guilty.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement that seven people, including three minors, had been taken into custody in a separate case. The suspects had purportedly been involved in a Ukrainian plot to assassinate the executive manager of a defense firm based in Moscow Region.
Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, a number of public figures supportive of Moscow’s actions have been killed in assassinations attributed to Kiev’s spy agencies.
Last week, General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Forces, and his assistant perished in a bomb explosion in Moscow, with the suspect being apprehended soon thereafter.
