MOSCOW: Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday it had foiled an attempt by Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence service to assasinate Tikhon Shevkunov, a senior priest in Russia\u2019s Orthodox Church.
\nThere was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the allegation.
\nShevkunov, who has been described in Russian media reports for years as \u201cPutin\u2019s confessor\u201d \u2014 something he has neither confirmed nor denied \u2014 has maintained a public acquaintance with President Vladimir Putin since the late 1990s and the Kremlin has said the two men know each other well.
\nIn 2023, he was appointed metropolitan of Crimea, becoming one of the top Russian Orthodox Church officials on the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
\nThe FSB said in a statement it had detained one Russian and one Ukrainian man in connection with the plot and had confiscated an improvised explosive device. It said the two suspects, whom it did not name, had confessed.
\nIt said that the two men, who it said had been recruited by Ukraine using the Telegram messenger service, had been plotting the assassination attempt since mid 2024 and had planned to kill Shevkunov in Moscow.
\nUkraine has taken responsibility for a number of assassinations in Russia since the start of the war in 2022, including pro-Moscow Ukrainian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April 2023, and the head of Russia\u2019s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, Igor Kirillov, in December 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: Russia\u2019s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday it had foiled an attempt by Ukraine\u2019s military intelligence service to assasinate Tikhon Shevkunov, a senior priest in Russia\u2019s Orthodox Church. There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the allegation. Shevkunov, who has been described in Russian media reports for years as \u201cPutin\u2019s confessor\u201d \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-464297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n