Moscow says Kyiv plot to kill high-ranking officer with music speaker bomb foiled

28 December 2024, 11:51

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer 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 that a Russian citizen had established contact with an officer from Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency through the Telegram messaging application.

Following instructions from the Ukrainian intelligence officer, the Russian citizen then retrieved a bomb from a hiding place in Moscow, according to the FSB.

The bomb weighed the same as 1.5kg of TNT, and was full of ball bearings.

It was concealed in a portable music speaker, the FSB said.

The FSB did not name the officer or the blogger who was the target of the plot.

According to Reuters, Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency could not be immediately reached for comment.

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Ukraine has said that Russia's war is an existential threat to the Ukrainian state and has stressed that it views targeted killings, which are meant to weaken morale and punish those Kyiv regards guilty of war crimes, as legitimate.

Russia views them as illegal "acts of terrorism" and accuses Ukraine of assassinating civilians such as Darya Dugina, the daughter of a nationalist ideologue, in 2022.

On December 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 is something Moscow denies.

Donald Trump's designated Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on December 18 that such killings were "not really smart" and going "a little bit too far."

Russia said that it would take revenge for the Kirillov killing.