Russia’s FSB security service said Friday that it thwarted a Ukrainian plot to assassinate a high-ranking security official in Moscow, which allegedly used “similar tactics” to the December 2024 assassination of the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit.
The FSB said it found an explosive device inside an electric scooter parked near the entrance of a business center. Ukraine’s SBU security service allegedly planned to detonate the bomb remotely when the security official, who was not identified by name, walked past it.
“This could have resulted in a large number of civilian casualties,” the FSB said in a statement.
Ukraine did not immediately respond to the allegations.
A video released by the state-run TASS news agency showed a bomb disposal robot and an explosives specialist approaching the electric scooter at night.
Law enforcement authorities said they launched a manhunt for the person who had parked the scooter near the business center.
“The enemy employed similar tactics in a previous sabotage and terrorist act involving an IED mounted on an electric scooter,” the FSB said, referring to the Dec. 17, 2024, assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant as they left a Moscow apartment building.
Kirillov is the highest-ranking Russian general to be assassinated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In January, a military court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison after he was found guilty of making a bomb that he attached to an electric scooter and detonated remotely outside of Kirillov’s apartment building.
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