Ukrainian intelligence brokers killed members of a Russian secret service cell needed on suspicion of getting shot lifeless a colonel final week, the SBU mentioned.
The SBU intelligence company mentioned in an announcement that the operation had sought the arrest of the brokers of Russia’s Federal Safety Service (FSB), who it believes had been behind the killing of Colonel Ivan Voronych – additionally a member of the SBU safety service – in Kyiv on Thursday.
“This morning a particular operation was carried out, throughout which the members of the Russian FSB’s agent cell began to withstand, and subsequently they had been liquidated,” an announcement on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday mentioned.
Russian authorities made no speedy public touch upon Sunday’s operation, which mirrored previous assassinations of senior Russian army officers by Ukraine throughout the three-year-old warfare – a supply of embarrassment for Moscow’s huge intelligence companies.
The SBU mentioned two individuals – a person and a lady – had been suspected of getting killed Voronych in a daring daylight assault that was caught on surveillance cameras. It didn’t say what number of suspected FSB brokers had been killed on Sunday, however the SBU posted a video through which two our bodies had been seen.
Media reviews claimed that Voronych was concerned in covert operations in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine and reportedly helped organise Ukraine’s shock incursion into Russia’s Kursk area final yr.
In line with the SBU, the alleged assassins had been instructed by their handler to surveil their goal and monitor his actions. They had been ultimately given the coordinates of a hiding place the place they discovered a pistol with a suppressor, the SBU mentioned.
It mentioned that they had tried to “lay low” after Thursday’s killing however had been tracked down by the SBU and police.
The company’s remit covers safety and counterintelligence, however since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine it has additionally performed a outstanding function in particular operations in opposition to Moscow, together with assassinations and sabotage assaults.
After a sequence of giant assaults throughout Ukraine involving a whole bunch of exploding drones, Russia launched 60 drones in a single day into Sunday, Ukraine’s air power mentioned. It mentioned 20 of them had been shot down and 20 others had been jammed.
On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities reported that 4 civilians had been killed and 13 others injured in Russian assaults on the Donetsk and Kherson areas since Saturday.
With Reuters, Agence France-Presse and the Related Press
