Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the feared KGB of the Soviet Union, said on Thursday it thwarted a Ukrainian plot to assassinate Russian military officers and their families in Moscow using hidden bombs.
“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defense Ministry. Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained,” the Russian security agency said.
According to the FSB, one of the detainees procured a bomb small enough to be disguised as a portable cell phone charger, which was supposed to be attached to a car with magnets. A second member of the conspiracy was tasked with scouting senior Russian defense officials to choose targets for the operation.
Russian state television broadcast footage of the suspects ostensibly confessing they were recruited by Ukrainian agents to assassinate Russian military officials.
The tactic described by the FSB was similar to the bombing that killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirilov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, on December 17.
Kirilov, 54, was killed along with his deputy Ilya Polikarpov by a remote-controlled bomb attached to a scooter. The bomb was detonated while the two men were leaving Kirilov’s home in a residential area in southeastern Moscow.
Ukraine’s SBU security service promptly claimed responsibility for the attack, describing the Russian general as a “legitimate target” and a war criminal.
“Such an inglorious end awaits everyone who kills Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable,” the SBU said.
Kirilov was under sanctions from the United Kingdom and Canada for spreading “disinformation” and overseeing the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. The SBU essentially put Kirilov on trial in absentia the day before he was killed, finding him guilty of “the mass use of banned chemical weapons.”
The day after Kirilov’s death, Russian officials announced a 29-year-old Uzbek man was in custody for “committing a terrorist act.” The suspect supposedly “explained that he was recruited by the Ukrainian special services” while under interrogation, saying the Ukrainians offered him $100,000 plus a European passport in exchange for his services.
Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly scolded the FSB for making a “major blunder” by permitting Kirilov’s assassination, which he described as an act of “terrorism.”
Russia has accused Ukraine of conducting other assassinations on Russian soil, but unlike the Kirilov case, Ukraine disputed those allegations. The SBU did not immediately comment on the new assassination plot the FSB claims to have thwarted on Thursday.
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