Russian FSB foils Ukrainian assassination attempt on senior defence officer and military blogger
MOSCOW – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a senior defence ministry officer and a military blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency through the Telegram messaging application.
On the instructions of the Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen had then retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, equivalent to 1 1/2 kg of TNT and packed with ball bearings, was concealed in a portable music speaker, the FSB added.
The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was the target of the plot, and Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency could not be immediately reached for comment.
On Dec. 17, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops, in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter. Kyiv had accused him of promoting the use of banned chemical weapons, which Moscow denies.
Donald Trump’s designated Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on Dec. 18 that such killings were “not really smart” and going “a little bit too far.”
