A Russian man accused of trying to blow up two court buildings on behalf of Ukraine has been detained and charged with terrorism, Russia’s FSB security services said on Monday.
Moscow has reported dozens of sabotage attacks on Russian territory since sending troops into Ukraine more than two years ago, blaming most of them on Kyiv and its supporters.
The suspect, in his mid-forties, was found “placing unknown objects in construction waste” near a railway station in the central city of Tambov, the FSB said.
Later inspection of the objects revealed they were “two homemade explosive devices”, which the man planned to detonate near two court buildings in the city, it alleged.
“He was detained by a security guard who arrived on the scene, and an operational and investigative team of the Federal Security Service was called,” it said.
According to the FSB, the suspect regularly visited pro-Ukrainian websites and had been recruited by Ukrainian special services to carry out the attack earlier this year.
Ukraine regularly denies responsibility for sabotage attacks inside Russia, pointing instead to internal unrest and domestic opposition to the conflict, now in its third year.
