The indictment comes amid an increase in targeted attacks against Ukrainian officials and public figures.
Ukraine arrested and charged a man who was accused of assassinating him and blowing up a building on orders from Russia.
The Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said in a statement Tuesday that the suspect is accused of murdering a Ukrainian soldier and plotting to assassinate an employee.
The arrest comes amid a clear rise in targeted attacks against Ukrainian officials and public figures, including local lawmakers killed in a car bomb in Dnipro city on Friday.
The prosecutor’s office said that a Ukrainian soldier died in March 2024, reportedly under the orders of the 56-year-old Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) on the Crimea Peninsula.
Prosecutors also accused the suspect of planting explosives under Vyacheslav Zadorenko’s car. However, Kalkiv officials discovered the bomb and “save his own life,” they said in a statement.
The suspect is also said to have been tasked with killing the head of Ole Schenyubov of the Khalkiv region with a reward of $50,000.
He also set out with explosives planted in strategically important buildings in the northeastern city of Kalkiv, the statement added.
Russia and Ukraine have targeted each other’s officials in assassination plots since the invasion of Moscow in February 2022.
The Ukrainian anti-intelligence investigator claimed that he had blocked a Russian conspiracy to assassinate President Voldymir Zelenki in May last year, and is Ukrainian military intelligence director and head of SBU Security Services.
Zelenskyy says that since the start of the war with Russia, there have been many attempts to assassinate him.
The FSB did not comment on Kiev’s claims regarding the suspect.
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