MOSCOW — Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday (Dec 26) it foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian officers and their families in Moscow using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.

Ukraine's SBU intelligence service killed Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, on Dec 17 in Moscow outside his apartment building by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.

An SBU source confirmed to Reuters that the Ukrainian intelligence agency was behind the hit. Russia said the killing was a terrorist attack by Kyiv and vowed revenge.

"The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has prevented a series of assassination attempts on high-ranking military personnel of the Defence Ministry," the FSB said.

"Four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of these attacks have been detained," it added.

The FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said the four suspects were recruited by the Ukrainian intelligence services.

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