The intended target, 66-year-old Tikhon Shevkunov, is widely reported in Russian media as Putin’s “confessor.” While the Kremlin has confirmed a long-standing acquaintance between the two men, dating back to the late 1990s, the exact nature of their relationship remains unclear.
In a statement, the FSB said it had detained two men it said had been recruited by Ukrainian military intelligence on the Telegram messenger service in mid-2024.
Ukraine has taken responsibility for a number of assassinations in Russia since the start of the war - most recently for the killing of Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, in December.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have thwarted a Ukrainian plot to assassinate a prominent priest with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.
In 2023, Shevkunov was appointed to the senior church rank of metropolitan of Crimea, the peninsula which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
