Russia Says It Killed Ukrainian Agent Plotting "Terrorist" Acts: Report

Russia's FSB security service said on Friday it had killed a man recruited by Ukraine to blow up military buildings and energy sites in Russia, state media reported.

Moscow has reported foiling dozens of alleged sabotage attacks on Russian territory by pro-Ukrainian sympathisers since it launched its military offensive in February 2022.

The FSB said on Friday it had "neutralised" a man who had "planned to commit a series of terrorist acts in Russia", Russian state-run news agencies quoted an FSB statement as saying.

These, it said, included attacks "against defence ministry facilities in the Moscow region and against members of a volunteer battalion and a volunteer centre in Saint Petersburg".

The RIA Novosti agency published an FSB video featuring drone footage of an apparent firefight between FSB agents and the suspect in the Leningrad region, close to Saint Petersburg.

The man is seen running into a concrete bunker in a field before armed FSB agents surround it and open fire.

The video then shows a photo of his dead body inside the bunker, with a pistol lying by his hand.

The FSB said he was a Russian citizen, born in 1976, who had been recruited by Ukraine's GUR military intelligence unit.

It said he had previously managed to flee when the FSB tried to detain him in the Moscow region, abandoning a car containing grenades, a pistol, a hunting rifle and equipment for making homemade bombs.

The man was planning to attack a fuel depot in the Leningrad region, the FSB alleged.

Ukraine has been linked to a spate of attacks on high-profile backers of Moscow's offensive.

They include a 2022 car bombing that killed Darya Dugina outside Moscow and a 2023 bomb attack on a Saint Petersburg cafe that killed military blogger Maxim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky.

Earlier on Friday, a military court in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk sentenced an activist to 15 years in prison for setting fire to a military recruitment office and vandalising the graves of Russian soldiers.

Dozens of enlistment buildings across Russia have been targeted with Molotov cocktails by people protesting against the military campaign in Ukraine and against troop mobilisation.

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