The Russian security services of the FSB announced Thursday December 26 that they had foiled several assassination attempts on senior army officials. Potential terrorist acts that Moscow blames on Ukrainian services, after the assassination last week of General Igor Kirillov as he left his home.
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With our correspondent in Moscow, Jean-Didier Revoin
We do not know the identity of the targets. Russian FSB intelligence at most concedes that he foiled a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel in the Russian Defense Ministry. The Federal Security Service further mentions that four nationals of the Federation of Russiarecruited by the Ukrainian secret services and involved in the preparation of these attacks, were arrested.
We know a little more about their modus operandi. The latter consisted of placing explosives in everyday objects or those that closely resembled them. For example, it involved having one of the soldiers deliver a bomb resembling a briefcase. Or attaching a bomb camouflaged as an electric battery to the car of a Ministry of Defense official.
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The explosion of a trapped electric scooter
If these assassination attempts were foiled, this was not the case for General Igor Kirillov: He died on December 17 in the explosion of a booby-trapped electric scooter as he was leaving his home. .
According to the testimony of the main suspect, arrested a few hours later, the bomb had been activated by members of the Ukrainian services. The latter monitored the comings and goings at the bottom of the building in real time. This is done using a video camera placed in a rental car parked nearby.
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