Russia detains a German national for an alleged bomb plot targeting a law enforcement facility, claiming the attack was orchestrated by Ukraine.
MOSCOW: Russia said Monday it had arrested a German woman with a bomb in her backpack who planned to blow up up a services facility in a Ukrainian plot.
Moscow has arrested dozens of people throughout the four-year war, mostly its own citizens, over allegations of planning sabotage attacks for Kyiv.
There have been several high-profile arrests of Western citizens since Russia ordered its troops into Ukraine — typically on espionage charges that are widely seen as baseless, with those detained later swapped in exchange for Russians jailed abroad.
Detentions of Western citizens for carrying out or preparing actual attacks are much rarer.
The FSB security agency said the woman, born in 1969, had been dragged into the alleged plot by a citizen from a Central Asian country, who was working on orders from Ukraine.
She was detained and found with an improvised explosive device in her bag in the Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk, the FSB said.
The FSB said it had “prevented a terrorist attack planned by the Kyiv regime against a law enforcement facility in the Stavropol region, involving a German citizen born in 1969,” the agency said in a statement.
The FSB said the device — which contained an explosive charge equivalent to 1.5 kilogrammes (three pounds) of TNT — was supposed to be detonated remotely, killing the German woman.
The blast was prevented by electronic jamming, the FSB added.
‘Radical ideology’
A man from an unidentified Central Asian state, born in 1997 and “a supporter of radical ideology”, was found and arrested near the targeted site, it added.
There was no immediate reaction to the allegations in Kyiv.
A spokesperson for Germany’s foreign ministry said they had “taken note” of the reports in the press but declined to confirm the case or provide any further details for privacy reasons.
Video footage of the purported arrest published on state media showed armed Russian security agents approach the woman, who was lying face down dressed in all black in a car park.
Her face blurred, she is then shown reading a statement in which she says she became a German citizen in 1995 and had moved to Russia in 2022.
Another video showed masked plainclothes agents pulling a man into a station, followed by a controlled explosion of the backpack.
He is also filmed reading a statement allegedly detailing the plot.
Russia has previously accused Ukraine of working with Islamist fundamentalists to carry out terror attacks inside Russia, without providing evidence.
Officials initially alleged that the perpetrators of a 2024 massacre at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow that killed 150 people were IS members in coordination with Ukraine.
IS claimed responsibility for that attack, making no reference of any Ukrainian involvement, for which no evidence was presented by Moscow and which Kyiv denies.
