MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. A Ukrainian special services representative, who recruited two Russian citizens to assassinate one of the country’s highest-ranking officials, promised them drugs for completing the task, the detainees said, according to a video distributed by the FSB.
"In the Imo messenger, I met Ruslan, who offered me to go to Moscow for methadone and do his business. I took my husband, and we went," said one of the detainees.
According to the FSB, at the Rumyantsevo metro station a man carrying a vase approached the woman and her husband, who had agreed to carry out the assignment. From there, they took a cab to the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery. Ruslan, a Ukrainian special services agent, instructed them remotely, guiding them by phone to the correct gravesite. The third participant in the plot - the man who had delivered the vase - remained outside the cemetery.
"We found the grave. He [Ruslan] told us to place the vase in the far-left corner. We did everything, threw away the bag, and were about to leave," said the woman’s husband, the second participant in the operation.
Ruslan then told them to return and adjust the vase, explaining that a video camera was installed inside it. "I illuminated it with a flashlight and saw wires inside the vase. I assumed it was an explosive device," the man said.
Earlier, the Russian Federal Security Service reported that it had thwarted an attack on one of Russia’s top officials during his visit to the graves of close relatives at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery. According to the agency, Ukrainian security services had recruited an illegal migrant from Central Asia and two previously convicted, drug-dependent Russian citizens detained in Moscow, as well as Shamso Jaloliddin Kurbanovich, born in 1979 and residing in Kiev, who is wanted in Russia for murder and illegal arms trafficking. The first three suspects have been detained.