Russia claims it foiled several Ukrainian plots to kill senior officers with disguised bombs
Russia claims it foiled several Ukrainian plots to kill senior officers with disguised bombs
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Moscow’s Federal Security Service has arrested four Russians accused of helping plan the attack. 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.
![[A view of the blast scene, which killed the commander of Russian armed forces' chemical, biological and radiation defence troops, Igor Kirillov]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/17/07/2189825706.jpg)
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.
![[Rescuers of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service work to put out a fire in a private house after a drone strike in Kharkiv]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/25/10/GettyImages-2190748043.jpg)
“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.
