Authorities in Moscow said on Saturday that they had prevented the killing of a high-ranking Russian military officer and a pro-war Russian blogger with a homemade bomb hidden in a portable music speaker, a plot allegedly prepared by Ukraine.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said that a Russian citizen, who is now in custody, appears to have followed orders from an intelligence officer working at Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR), who claimed to be named “Andrey” over the Telegram messaging service.
As part of the plot, the Russian suspect retrieved from a hiding place in Moscow a homemade bomb disguised as a portable speaker and containing the equivalent of 1.5 kilograms of TNT, the FSB said.
The FSB did not give more specifics on the identities of the targets.
Disclosure of the alleged plot comes 10 days after Ukraine assassinated the commander of the Russian army’s nuclear, biological and chemical forces in Moscow.
In October, Andriy Korotkyy, a security chief at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, was killed in a car bombing. GUR took responsibility for that operation, calling Korotkyy “a war criminal.”
Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the latest plot.
