The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said it had neutralized a group of Russian saboteurs who were preparing to set fire to shopping malls in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries, the BBC reports, quoted by News.bg.
The SBU report says that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operative group consisted of 19 people living in the Ukrainian regions of Ivano-Frankivsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Poltava, as well as in the city of Zaporizhia.
Ukrainian special services reported that they had detained "the organizer of the enemy cell and his accomplice".
"The attackers acted as part of a criminal group whose activities were remotely coordinated by employees of the Russian special services," the SBU wrote.
According to the Ukrainian service, the group's targets were "shopping malls, gas stations, pharmacies and markets in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic countries", and its members recruited "candidates to commit arson of civilian objects" for money. These people, according to the SBU, were planned to be sent to the EU with false documents issued in the name of third countries.
At the same time, the attackers planned to film the arson attacks with their phones and use these recordings "to prepare special information operations aimed at undermining the socio-political situation in the European Union," the SBU claims.
In recent months, Western intelligence agencies have warned of a large-scale Russian subversive campaign in countries supporting Ukraine. Including, according to CNN, agents hired by Russia have planned arson attacks and attacks on Western military bases, the goal of which is to destabilize the situation in Western countries and influence public sentiment.