MOSCOW
Russia said Monday it had arrested a German woman found with a homemade bomb in her backpack in what it alleged was a Ukrainian-hatched plot to blow up a security services facility in southern Russia. The FSB security agency said the woman, born in 1969, had been dragged into the plot by a citizen from a Central Asian country, who was working on orders from Ukraine.
She was detained and found with an improvised explosive device in her bag in the Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk, the FSB said. Russia has arrested dozens of people throughout the four-year war, mostly its own citizens, on allegations of working for Ukraine to carry out sabotage attacks.
The FSB said it had “prevented a terrorist attack planned by the Kyiv regime against a law enforcement facility in the Stavropol region, involving a German citizen born in 1969,” the agency said in a statement. The FSB said the device — which contained an explosive charge equivalent to 1.5 kilograms (3 pounds) of TNT — was supposed to be detonated remotely, killing the German woman.
The blast was prevented by electronic jamming, the FSB said.A man from an unidentified Central Asian state, born in 1997 and “a supporter of radical ideology,” was found and arrested near the targeted site, it added.
The pair face life in prison on terrorist charges.
Russia has previously accused Ukraine of working with Islamic fundamentalists to carry out terror attacks inside Russia, without providing evidence. Officials initially alleged that the perpetrators of a 2024 massacre at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow that killed 150 people were Daesh members in coordination with Ukraine.
Daesh claimed responsibility for that attack, making no reference of any Ukrainian involvement, for which no evidence was presented by Moscow and which Kyiv denies.
