Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had thwarted terrorist attacks that were “unprecedented in scale and severity” and that Ukraine’s intelligence services had allegedly sought to organize. The FSB made the announcement through Russian state media.
According to the agency, Ukraine had been planning terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage using drones against military facilities and one of the country’s leading defense industry enterprises, as well as against personnel of Russia’s Defense Ministry. The FSB did not identify the facilities or the enterprise, and the names of the individuals targeted for assassination were not disclosed.
Among the cases cited, the FSB said it had detained a suspect in Moscow in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate a senior Defense Ministry officer. The suspect is a Russian woman born in 2001 whom, the agency said, Ukrainian intelligence services recruited in 2024.
According to investigators, a Ukrainian intelligence officer who communicated with the woman “simulated a romantic relationship” with her and promised to continue it in Ukraine “after all assignments had been completed.” In 2026, acting on his instructions, she rented an apartment in Moscow, where she used cameras to surveil the military officer’s home and vehicle and streamed the footage to Ukraine.
The FSB said: “In the rented apartment, she prepared disguises and food supplies for the covert stay of the direct perpetrator of the terrorist act, whose arrival was planned after her departure from Russia in transit through Turkey and Moldova to Ukraine.”
The woman, 25, has not been named. She faces charges of preparing a terrorist act and may also be charged with treason.
The Russian state news agency TASS distributed video of the detention and interrogation. The footage shows masked FSB officers seizing the woman during a walk with her dog. She screams, and bystanders take notice but do not intervene. The FSB did not say when she was detained.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.
