Russia thwarts Ukraine plots to kill senior officers with disguised bombs, says spy agency
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Uzbek Ahmad Kurbanov is suspected of killing Russia’s Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov with a bomb.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
MOSCOW – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Dec 26 that it foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on Dec 17 in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
An SBU source confirmed to Reuters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency was behind the hit. Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Kyiv and vowed revenge.
“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defence Ministry,” the FSB said.
“Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained,” it added.
The FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said the four suspects were recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
One of the men retrieved a bomb disguised as a power bank in Moscow that was to be attached with magnets to the car of one of the Defence Ministry’s top officials, the FSB said.
Another man was tasked with tailing senior Russian defence officials.
One plot involved the delivery of a bomb disguised as a document folder, the FSB said.
The exact date of the planned attacks was unclear, though one of the suspects said he retrieved a bomb on Dec 23, according to the FSB.
Russian state TV showed what it said was footage of some of the suspects who admitted to being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence for bombings against Russian Defence Ministry officials.
Moscow holds Ukraine responsible for a string of high-profile assassinations on its soil designed to weaken morale – and says the West is supporting a “terrorist regime” in Kyiv.
Ukraine, which says Russia’s war against it poses an existential threat to the Ukrainian state, has made clear it regards such targeted killings as a legitimate tool.
Ms Darya Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, was killed in August 2022 near Moscow.
The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorised the killing.
US officials later admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, the Times said. Ukraine denied it killed Ms Dugina. REUTERS
