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Ukraine’s SBU security service
Ukraine’s SBU security service foiled an attempt by Russian
intelligence services to recruit Ukrainian teenagers to carry out a large-scale
act of sabotage near Kyiv, the SBU announced on Oct. 8.
According to investigators, Russian handlers posing as SBU
officers blackmailed a 17-year-old resident of Kyiv Oblast into setting fire to
a convoy of trucks belonging to a local logistics company.
The teenager was also instructed to buy a package of screws,
place it in a hidden cache and send the location to a handler in Russia.
Another local resident, a 16-year-old, was supposed to
retrieve the screws at those coordinates. Russian agents had recruited him
separately as part of the same “false flag” operation. He was then expected to
scatter the screws on a highway to temporarily block freight traffic.
SBU officers uncovered the plot and detained the 17-year-old
after he set fire to several trucks.
The investigation found that the two teenagers had been
recruited separately by Russian agents in Telegram chats for people seeking
romantic relationships. The agents created fake accounts posing as girls.
Eventually, the “girls” disappeared from the chats and were replaced by a
Russian intelligence operative posing as an SBU officer.
The operative claimed that the “girls” had been detained for
treason and threatened to prosecute the boys as accomplices. To avoid the
fabricated charges, the teenagers were told they had to “help with the
investigation.”
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