Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include additional information the SBU provided at a briefing in Kyiv on Dec. 10.
One suspected member of a Russian sabotage group was killed, and seven additional suspects were detained during raids in Kyiv and Kharkiv late on Dec. 9, according to Ukraine’s security service, or SBU.
The man killed is a Ukrainian citizen and the leader of the group. Three of the detained suspects are Russian
nationals, while the remainder are Ukrainian, according to the SBU.
One SBU Alpha special operations officer, a decorated veteran of Ukraine’s military operations in the east of the country, was killed in
a shootout at an apartment in Kyiv’s Obolon district late on Dec. 9, which
also left another wounded in what the SBU said was a raid against a sabotage
and reconnaissance group.
The SBU said the group had been operating in the
Ukrainian capital and other cities.
According to SBU spokesperson Olena Hitlyanska, the officer
who was killed was critically wounded when one of the alleged group of
saboteurs resisted arrest, opening fire with an assault rifle. The officer
later died of his wounds, while the attacker was killed as officers stormed the
apartment, the SBU said. Another Alpha officer was wounded in the shootout and his condition is stable.
Another raid took place in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, in eastern Ukraine, military spokesman Oleksandr Motuznyak said at a news briefing in Kyiv. The SBU said that both the Kyiv and Kharkiv members of the group were planning to carry out attacks.
During the raid in Obolon, the owners of the
apartment, along with their seven-year-old child and the critically wounded
officer, had been evacuated from the apartment before the suspected saboteur — the father of the child — was shot dead.
Eight improvised explosive devices, four kilograms of
TNT, automatic weapons, grenades, more than 42,000 rounds of ammunition, and
parts of explosive devices and weapons were found in the apartment, according
to the SBU.
On Sept. 3, the SBU said it foiled a Russian-led
terror plot
in the same Kyiv district of Obolon, arresting
four men suspected of planning to bomb a donation center for nationalist group Right
Sector. Its Alpha unit detained the four men led by a 50-year-old native of
Russia’s Sakhalin Island, near the donation center.
As one of the suspects was being detained, police said
he threw an RGD-5 grenade that detonated near the building. An Alpha officer
shot the suspect in the leg, but no other injuries were reported.
The Russian suspect had been living in Fastiv, a city
in Kyiv Oblast. The other three suspects, aged 42, 26 and 22, were also either
residents of Kyiv or the region. They were all part of a “pro-Russian Cossack
group,” the SBU’s Hitlyanska said.
Similar raids have occurred in Kharkiv Oblast over the
past two years.
A video released by the SBU shows the aftermath of raids on a suspected sabotage group, including the cache of weapons and military equipment. The passport of an unidentified Russian citizen is also shown.
In August, an Alpha
group unit detained three men
suspected of sabotage who regularly
traveled to Belgorod in Russia for training and instructions. A rocket
launcher, grenades and other explosives were found at their residence.
Three other suspects the same month were caught in the
act of wiring
explosive devices to a railroad track
in Kharkiv
Oblast, according to the SBU. One of the suspects was a Ukrainian border
guardsman. Some 2.5 kilograms of TNT was found at the site, detailed maps of
the area, a rocket-propelled grenade, various grenades and rounds of
ammunition.
The SBU has regularly reported finding caches of
weapons in the east of Ukraine near the parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk
oblasts controlled by Russian-backed armed groups. The cities of Odesa and
Kharkiv have also witnessed bomb attacks, including one on Feb. 22 in Kharkiv
that killed four people and wounded 10 others.
Apart from terror-related incidents, Kyiv’s metro
stations, shops and restaurants are regularly the target of hoax bomb threats.
Kyiv Post
editor Euan MacDonald can be reached at
[email protected]. Additional reporting by Kyiv Post
editor
Mark
Rachkevych, who can be reached at
[email protected].
