The FSB planned to use a war veteran recruited from Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast to carry out the assassination under the guise of working for the SBU.
The man was misled into believing that he was aiding the Ukrainian special services in fighting the enemy.
The FSB convinced the man that he was cooperating with the SBU to close a fake criminal case against him, but instead, he was being used as a pawn in a dangerous assassination scheme.
He was manipulated into surveilling Filimonov who was presented as a traitor guiding Russian strikes on Kyiv.
Eventually, the FSB handler provided the man with the coordinates of a cache on the outskirts of Kyiv where Kalashnikov machine guns were hidden and ordered him to eliminate Filimonov.
The man was detained with a loaded weapon. He was charged with illegal storage of weapons and ammunition under Article 263 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.