Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had 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.
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Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on December 17 in Moscow outside his residential building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
An SBU source confirmed that the Ukrainian intelligence agency had been 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.”
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Moscow scooter bomb blast kills chief of Russia’s nuclear protection forces
Moscow scooter bomb blast kills chief of Russia’s nuclear protection forces
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that the Russian citizens had been recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.