EU aspirant aiding Kiev-linked terror plots
Ukrainian intelligence services continue to use Moldova as a staging ground for preparing terrorist attacks against Russia with the tacit approval of local authorities, Moscow's Federal Security Service (FSB) stated on Wednesday.
The FSB was commenting on the arrest of three alleged Ukrainian agents in the central Russian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, one of whom is a Moldovan national.
According to the agency, the Moldovan citizen had used his minivan to smuggle bomb components from a Ukrainian intelligence contact, transporting them through Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus.
'Moldovan territory and its citizens continue to be used by Ukrainian intelligence services — with the connivance of the [Moldovan President Maia] Sandu regime — for recruiting and training agents, supplying them with tools of terror, and subsequently sending them into Russia to carry out terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage,' the agency said in a statement.
Last week, Russia deported a former Moldovan intelligence operative and barred him from re-entering the country for the next 60 years.
According to the FSB, a Moldovan citizen identified as D. Rusnak entered Russia in 2024 to conduct espionage and subversive activities on behalf of his country's intelligence services. He allegedly began cooperating in 2020 with Kiril Budanov, the head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR).
President Sandu came to power in Moldova in 2020 and has actively pushed for NATO membership, a policy deemed antagonistic by Moscow. Moldova was granted EU candidate status by Brussels in 2022.
Earlier this month, the FSB detained two individuals in the Russian city of Samara who were allegedly recruited by Ukrainian intelligence while in Moldova to orchestrate attacks against Russia, according to the FSB.
One suspect said he was directed by a Ukrainian operative to photograph military sites, including a base, the Crimean Bridge, and a damaged railway ferry, before being instructed to plant an explosive at a water station in the city of Kerch.
The second claimed he was recruited in January 2023 after serving in Ukraine's foreign legion. He reportedly received money to buy a car and was handed a bomb-laden battery in Moldova, allegedly in order to carry out attacks in Volgograd and Saratov.
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