Russia Uncovers Plot To Kill Defense Officials Amid Drone Strikes In Ukraine
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
KYIV/MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Russia’s leading security service suggested Thursday it had uncovered a plot by Kyiv to kill “senior Defense Ministry officials,” prompting Moscow to fire drones at Ukraine, injuring several people.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor of the KGB, said it had detained four Russians who allegedly prepared the planned murders.
The FSB said that suspected organizers of the attacks were to kill one of the senior officers “using a remotely controlled car bomb.”
It added that another top military official was to be assassinated by “an explosive device hidden in an envelope.” The agency didn’t name the military officers targeted in the alleged plot.
The FSB released a video showing the arrest and interrogation of the suspects, who weren’t named.
Their arrests came after last week a general accused by Kyiv of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops was assassinated in Moscow using a bomb hidden in an electric scooter, officials said.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt along with his assistant, added Russia’s Investigative Committee.
KREMLIN THREATENED
With the war getting closer to the Kremlin, Russia fought back using drones Thursday after attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure with missiles on Christmas Day.
The Russian drone attack on the central market in the Ukrainian town of Nikopol injured eight on Thursday morning, local authorities said.
Seven of those injured were reportedly hospitalized after the strike damaged “multiple stalls at the market,” Dnipropetrovsk governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on social media.
The drone strike comes after Russia’s Christmas Day attack on the country’s energy system killed one person in the region.
The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that it shot down 20 drones out of 31 launched by Russia overnight. Of the 31 drones, 11 “imitator drones” did not reach their targets due to active engagement from the Ukrainian military, it added.
The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Russian forces have captured the village of Hihant in eastern Ukraine.
It was one of the latest small victories in the area in a war that has no real winners.
MANY KILLED
Numerous numerous sources believe that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and injured in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two.
Yet there was some hope Thursday as Russia “is willing to work” with U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming administration to improve relations, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
Trump, who returns as president on January 20 styles himself as a master dealmaker and vowed to swiftly end the war in Ukraine, without providing many details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have still to agree on end to fighting that even continued around Christmas.
However “if the signals that are coming from the new team in Washington to restore the dialogue that Washington interrupted after the start of a special military operation [war in Ukraine] are serious, of course, we will respond to them,” Lavrov told reporters.
“But the Americans broke [off] the dialogue, so they should make the first move,” he stressed.
However, Pope Francis urged faster action and called for an end to the war in Ukraine in his traditional Christmas Day address in Rome. “May the sound of arms be silenced in war-torn Ukraine. May there be the boldness needed to open the door to negotiation and to gestures of dialogue and encounter, in order to achieve a just and lasting peace,” the pope said
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