MOSCOW, May 3. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) busted a British explosives delivery channel used by Ukrainian military intelligence for committing terror attacks in Crimea, including assassination attempts on the Crimean Republic’s leadership, the FSB press office told TASS on Wednesday.
The international channel organized by the Ukrainian intelligence ran from Bulgaria to Russia through Turkey and Georgia. The perpetrators delivered explosives and their components disguised as "household electric stoves that members of the said group intended to use in their terror activity," the press office said in a statement.
According to the FSB’s data, Ukrainian female citizen Marina Matushchak dealt with the deliveries of electric stoves with explosives and their components from Bulgaria to Russia and Ukrainian citizens Denis Smirnov and Vladislav Sarafinchan subsequently handed them over to Ukrainian and Bulgarian national D. Petranov, the FSB explained.
"After electric stoves were delivered by auto transport to Russian territory, they were subsequently brought to the places of plotting terror attacks by the transport companies SDEK and Vozovoz and their delivery was handled by Russian citizens who had commercial projects with the Bulgarian business headed by M. Matushchak and who were used by Ukrainian intelligence without their awareness," the statement reads.
It has been established that identical explosives were used during a sabotage act on the Crimean railway on February 23, 2023, it said.
The video uploaded by the FSB shows one of the women, who were used for sending the explosives, saying that she waited for 15 wedding gowns from her business partner in Bulgaria and along with them received two electric stoves allegedly sent to her by mistake. She was requested to re-send them to Yalta and at the post office she realized that the two stoves that were expected to weigh 3.5 kg each, turned out to weigh 11 kg. Later, the FSB found explosives and explosives components in the electric stoves.