Russia has claimed it has foiled several Ukrainian plots to assassinate senior officers and their families using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
The country’s Federal Security Service said it had arrested four Russians accused of helping plan the attack, just weeks after a high-ranking officer was killed outside his Moscow apartment by a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service confirmed they were behind the attack on December 17, which killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops.
“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 on Thursday.
Ukraine’s SBU did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that the Russian citizens arrested had been recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.
It said one of the men retrieved a bomb disguised as a portable charger in Moscow that was to be attached with magnets to the car of one of the Defence Ministry’s top officials.
Another Russian man was tasked with the surveying of senior Russian defence officials, it said, with one plot involving the delivery of a bomb disguised as a document folder.
The exact date of the planned attacks was unclear, though one of the suspects said he had retrieved a bomb on December 23, according to the FSB.
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.
Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden has pledged to push forward a new surge of military aid to Kyiv, in response to an “outrageous” attack launched by Russia on Christmas Day.
Half a million people were left without heating in Kharkiv after Putin’s forces launched the “inhumane” attack on Wednesday. Zelensky said more than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than 100 attack drones were used to strike Ukraine’s power sources.
Washington has committed $175 billion in aid for Ukraine. It is not certain the flow will continue at that pace under Trump, who has said he wants to bring the war to a quick end.
