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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a plot to kill a senior Russian military officer and a pro-Russian war blogger in Ukraine with a bomb hidden inside a portable music speaker.
The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-state KGB, said a Russian citizen worked with an officer of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency through the Telegram messaging app.
According to the FSB, a Russian citizen detonated a bomb from his hiding place in Moscow on the instructions of a Ukrainian intelligence officer. The bomb, equivalent to 1 1/2 kilograms of TNT and packed with ball bearings, was hidden inside a portable music speaker, the FSB said.
The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was the target of the conspiracy. Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency could not immediately be reached for comment.
Ukraine says Russia’s war against it threatens the existence of Ukraine’s territory and that targeted killings – aimed at weakening morale and punishing Kiev for war crimes – are legal.
Russia has accused Ukraine of killing civilians such as Daria Dugina, the daughter of a nationalist, in 2022 in what Russia says are illegal “acts of terrorism”.
On December 17, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical defense forces, by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow. Kiev accuses him of promoting the use of banned chemical weapons, which Moscow denies.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (NYSE: ), Donald Trump’s Ukraine representative, told Fox News on Dec. 18 that such killings are “really not smart” and “a little too far.”
Russia says it will retaliate for Kirillov’s killing.
