Russia says it foiled Ukrainian plot to kill official and blogger By Reuters
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a senior Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said a Russian citizen contacted an officer from Ukraine’s military intelligence service, GUR, through the messaging application Telegram.
On the instructions of the Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen then recovered a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, equivalent to 1 1/2 kg of TNT and filled with ball bearings, was hidden in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.
The FSB did not name the official or the blogger who was the target of the conspiracy. The Ukrainian military intelligence service GUR could not immediately be reached for comment.
Ukraine says Russia’s war against it poses an existential threat to the Ukrainian state and has made clear it views targeted killings – aimed at weakening morale and punishing those Kiev deems guilty of war crimes – as legitimate looks at.
Russia said these were illegal “acts of terrorism” and accused Ukraine of murdering civilians such as Darya Dugina, the daughter of a nationalist ideologue, in 2022.
On December 17, the Ukrainian secret service SBU killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, head of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, in front of his home in Moscow by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter. Kiev had accused him of promoting the use of banned chemical weapons, which Moscow denies.
Donald Trump’s designated Ukraine envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (NYSE:), told Fox News on December 18 that such killings were “not really smart” and went “a little bit too far.”
Russia announced that it would take revenge for Kirillov’s murder.
