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Ukrainian agent planned to present explosive gift to Russian defense official — FSB

The Russian Federal Security Service reported earlier on Thursday that it had foiled a series of assassination attempts on the lives of high-placed Defense Ministry officials in Moscow and their family members

MOSCOW, December 26. /TASS/. A Ukrainian intelligence agent apprehended by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) planned to present a bomb disguised as a gift to a Russian Defense Ministry official, the detainee said during his questioning in a video released by the FSB on Thursday.

"On December 23, at the request of my acquaintance Ragozha, Vitaly Nikolayevich, currently living in Poland, I took a parcel from an abandoned building in the town of Lyubertsy. It was intended as a gift for a Defense Ministry serviceman. As Ragozha told me, there was an envelope in the parcel. I also involved a person I was acquainted with to deliver the parcel. But I failed to give it over as I was detained by FSB operatives," the detainee said.

The FSB reported earlier on Thursday that it had foiled a series of assassination attempts on the lives of high-placed Defense Ministry officials in Moscow and their family members. The assassination attempts were plotted by Ukrainian intelligence services. FSB operatives apprehended four Ukrainian agents and seized improvised explosive devices and communications devices from the detainees who used them in their criminal activity, it said.

The FSB Investigative Department for Moscow and the Moscow Region has launched criminal probes. Depending on their role, the detainees will face criminal liability for the trafficking of explosives and explosive devices and the plotting of terrorist acts, and also for high treason that is punishable with life imprisonment in Russia.

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