MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a Ukrainian plot to kill a top Russian official and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said a Russian national had established contact with an officer from Ukraine's military intelligence agency GUR at the request of a Telegram message.
On the instructions of a Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen then took the bomb from his hideout in Moscow, the FSB said. The bomb, which weighs 1 1/2 kg of TNT and is filled with football balls, was hidden in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.
The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was targeted on the site. Ukraine's military intelligence agency GUR was not immediately available for comment.
Ukraine says Russia's war against it poses an existential threat to the Ukrainian state and has made it clear that it treats targeted killings – aimed at demoralizing and punishing those in Kyiv guilty of war crimes – as legitimate.
Russia has said they amount to illegal “acts of terrorism” and accused Ukraine of killing people such as Daria Dugina, the daughter of nationalists, in 2022.
On December 17, the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, head of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, in Moscow outside his residence by detonating a bomb attached to an electric motorcycle. Kyiv has accused him of promoting the use of banned chemical weapons, a charge Moscow denies.
Ukraine's envoy appointed by Donald Trump, Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg (NYSE:), told Fox News on Dec. 18 that such execution “doesn't really make sense” and goes “very slowly.”
Russia said it would take revenge for Kirillov's murder.