Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Monday that it arrested two Moldovan citizens and two Russians accused of planning and carrying out bomb attacks in Russia after Ukrainian intelligence services recruited them in Moldova.
The FSB said it charged Moldovan citizen Marius Pruneanu, 23, with explosives trafficking and planning a terrorist act.
According to the law enforcement agency, Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency recruited Pruneanu in December 2023, instructing him to store explosive devices somewhere in the cities of Saratov and Volgograd for planned attacks.
Before he was recruited, the FSB claimed Pruneanu fought on the side of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, serving on the front line in the eastern Donetsk region.
The second Moldovan citizen, 32-year-old Yevgeny Kurdoglu, faces the same charges and is cooperating with the investigation, according to the FSB. The law enforcement agency claimed that Kurdoglu shared the location of an explosive device in the port city of Kerch in annexed Crimea.
Ukrainian special services allegedly recruited Kurdoglu last April and ordered him to share photos and videos of Russian air defense systems, as well as transportation and energy infrastructure in Crimea.
The FSB identified the two detained Russian nationals only by their last names, first and middle initials and birth years.
S.A. Okrushko, 43, was charged with sabotage, terrorism, treason and the unlawful creation and storage of explosives. I.O. Izmailova, 35, was also charged with treason and the unlawful creation and storage of explosives.
The FSB accused Ukraine’s security services of recruiting Okrushko and Izmailova in Moldova in September 2022 and then sending them to the city of Samara to commit attacks.
Okrushko was also accused of “detonating a bomb” at a substation of the Kuibyshev oil refinery. The FSB did not say when that purported attack took place.
“This isn’t the first time that Ukrainian special services used Moldova’s territory, deliberately ignored by local authorities, to recruit and train agents, supply them with weapons and then transfer them to Russia in order to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism,” the FSB said.
The Moscow Times could not independently verify the FSB’s claims.
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