Russia’s FSB says it thwarted Ukrainian plots to kill high-ranking officers and their families

MOSCOW: Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had foiled a several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow.

Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant General Kirillov, chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on Dec. 17 in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.

An SBU source confirmed to Reuters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency had been behind the hit.

Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Kyiv and vowed revenge.

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“The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defence Ministry,” the FSB said.

“Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained.”