MOSCOW: Russia said on Friday it had arrested four women who were allegedly agents for Ukrainian special services preparing attacks against energy sites and senior officers.
Since launching its full-scale military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has arrested numerous people on espionage charges and allegedly cooperating with Kyiv’s intelligence agencies.
“The FSB has suppressed the activities of four women agents recruited by the Ukrainian special services,“ the agency said in a statement.
The women were arrested in Sevastopol, the main city of the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as well as the cities of Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don.
All four “were trained on Ukrainian territory in firearms, mines and explosives and drone guidance” in order to “commit acts of sabotage and terrorism against senior officers of Russia’s defence ministry and against energy sites”, the FSB said.
Searches of the women’s homes yielded a large number of explosives, materials for making bombs and means of communication with their Ukrainian supervisors, it said.
It said the women had confessed and were facing up to 30 years in prison.
