The FSB said it had detained a Mariupol resident who holds Russian citizenship. According to TASS, citing the agency’s public relations center, the man is suspected of preparing an explosion in a courthouse on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence services.
Investigators say the detainee was in contact on Telegram with a representative of Ukrainian intelligence and, acting on those instructions, retrieved an improvised explosive device from a stash. The FSB claims he was then supposed to detonate it in one of Mariupol’s district court buildings.
The agency said the suspect was detained near the courthouse. In video released by the security services, the arrest appears to take place at night: several men in civilian clothes hold the young man down on the ground while he shouts, “Call my mother.”
After the arrest, the man told the security services’ camera that he had been looking for a way to earn money and contacted an acquaintance, who gave him a contact for what he described as the “Ukrainian side.” He said he was first asked to pass along coordinates of Russian military personnel and was paid 5,000 rubles for each set of coordinates.
“Then they wrote to me: ‘Go to the stash, pick up the package, and take it to the destination.’ I arrived at the destination, and the FSB detained me,” the detainee said in the video.
A criminal case was opened against the Mariupol resident on charges of treason, preparing a terrorist attack, and illegal storage of explosives. The FSB also said that a court had already placed him in pretrial detention.