Фото: unsplash.com
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced that it prevented a series of terrorist attacks allegedly planned using shoe insoles. According to the agency, insoles containing explosives were brought from Poland via Belarus.
The FSB claims that a “series of high-profile terrorist attacks” involving improvised explosive devices and drones was being planned in Moscow and the Moscow Region, as well as in the combat zone in Ukraine, targeting critical infrastructure, government officials, Russian military personnel, and law enforcement officers. Ukrainian special services were allegedly behind the plans.
According to the FSB, the attacks were to involve explosive-laden insoles delivered to Russia in a parcel from Poland via Belarus and intended as humanitarian aid for Russian soldiers. A foreign national who received the package has been detained. His citizenship has not been disclosed.
“In Moscow, a foreign citizen born in 1994 was detained, who was involved in a smuggling channel organized by Ukrainian special services for supplying weapons into the territory of the Russian Federation from Poland in transit through the Republic of Belarus. Acting on instructions from a handler, he received at one of the transport and logistics companies in Moscow a parcel containing 504 improvised explosive devices disguised as heated shoe insoles. These items were subsequently intended to be sent to military units in the zone of the special military operation under the guise of humanitarian aid,” the FSB press service reported.
The explosive power of each device was said to be equivalent to 1.5 grams of TNT. Detonation was supposed to occur when the insoles were connected to a power source.
The FSB also claims that Ukrainian special services attempted to purchase fiber-optic drones at one of Moscow’s enterprises.