Alleged Ukrainian agent killed in Russia after plotting attacks
3 May 2024 13:08
Russian services were supposed to have shot a man suspected of allegedly preparing a terrorist attack. During the arrest, he was said to have resisted. The Federal Security Service claims that the man had come to the country from Lithuania, been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence, and additionally planned to carry out an attack, among others, in Latvia.
Many of the reports provided by Russian media and government officials are likely not true. Such information could be part of an information war on the part of the Russian Federation.
An independent Russian portal, Meduza, referring to an FSB statement, informs that the special services originally wanted to detain the man near Moscow when he was retrieving a weapon from a stash. However, the potential assailant disappeared.
He was found in the Leningrad region, as he was taking over "another arsenal of weapons of destruction." He was planning a terrorist attack on a fuel terminal. During the arrest, the suspect again offered armed resistance and was shot dead – reports the FSB.
Was the attacker targeting the Russian-speaking population?
The intelligence claims that the suspect was trained in the use of mine explosive materials and hand-held firearms in the city of Podbrodzie in Lithuania. They allegedly found information in his correspondence indicating that Ukrainian terrorists planned attacks in churches and residences of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic countries. Among the plans was also setting a cinema on fire in Riga during a film screening. According to reports by Meduza, the suspect allegedly arrived from Lithuania in March 2024.
In the suspect's car, they reportedly found a Stechkin pistol, a hunting shotgun, grenades, bomb components, documents, and a mobile phone, and in a rented apartment in Moscow – a card of the Lithuanian branch of Swedish Swedbank.
The FSB video published by RIA Novosti displays several photos of the suspect, with one photo showing him standing in front of a sign with the name of a locality in the Klaipeda region of Lithuania. The video also includes frames where gunshots are heard, followed by a review of a car. It shows a fragment of correspondence discussing some kind of sabotage and explosion. In response to the question "Is it there or here," the interlocutor writes that one generally has to go to Russia and they are wondering how to organize it, claims Meduza.
