The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has detected a subversive organization whose leaders were recruited by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
“The subversive group had to organize a protest movement against the actions of the Ukrainian authorities and mass riots to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. Active work among servicemen and campaign events among employees and trade union organizations were planned in this regard. In particular, [SBU] confirmed the Russian side’s involvement in organizing and provoking clashes with police officers in front of the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on Oct. 14,” the SBU press center reported on Monday.
According to the report, the group planned to seize government buildings and carry out acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks at communications, transport and utilities enterprises in the Ukrainian capital.
SBU counterintelligence officers identified a person who, together with a group of young people in balaclavas, was involved in the fighting near the Verkhovna Rada and was filmed by journalists. It was a Ukrainian citizen, born in 1962, a native of Russia, registered in Luhansk, who has a certificate of general of the Don Cossack army.
It was found that the subversive and terrorist group was led by Russian citizen Sergei Rastrigin, born in 1992, a native of Kharkiv, who was recruited by the Russian special services. A citizen of Ukraine, the founder of the Residents of Kyiv for a Clean City organization, anti-Maidan commandant recruited by FSB, Oleksandr Zinchenko, is also one of the group’s leaders.
Rastrigin was detained by counterintelligence, whereas Zinchenko is hiding in Moscow. SBU counterintelligence found a cache of weapons in Kyiv, in particular, man-portable air-defense systems, antitank grenade launchers, rocket flamethrowers, and grenades.
