The Security Service of Ukraine has arrested four men suspected in a plot to bomb a donation center for nationalist group Right Sector, the agency, known as the SBU, said in a statement posted on its website on Sept. 4.
The SBU’s Alpha anti-terrorist unit on Sept. 3
detained the four suspects, led by a 50-year-old native of Russia’s Sakhalin
Island, near the donation center, which is located on the first floor of a
high-rise residential building in Kyiv’s Obolon district.
As one of the suspects was being detained,
police said he threw an RGD-5 grenade that detonated near the donation center.
An Alpha unit officer shot the suspect in the leg, but no other injuries were reported.
The Russian leader of the group 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,” SBU spokeswoman
Olena Hitlyanska said, cited by daily newspaper Vesti on Sept. 4.
The men are being investigated in connection
with carrying out a terrorist act under article 258, section 2 of the criminal
code, which carries a prison sentence of 7-20 years.
“Items that could be used to commit terrorist
acts,” were found in the suspects’ possession, the SBU stated.
During the alleged terrorist act, the suspects
had turned off their mobile phones and were using radio walkie-talkies. They
had also put fake license plate numbers on the vehicle they were using, and had
“tactical backpacks with camouflage uniforms, sleeping mats, and food to go
into hiding,” according to the SBU statement.
After carrying out the terrorist act, the
Russian “organizer was supposed to immediately leave for the temporarily
occupied territory of Crimea,” the SBU said.
SBU video of anti-terrorist operation in Kyiv’s Obolon district (in the Russian language)
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at
[email protected].
