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.
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.”
Ukraine’s SBU did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
