Russia, which launched its full-scale offensive against Ukraine in 2022, regularly accuses Kyiv and its European allies of brazen sabotage operations on its soil, often without providing evidence.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had “uncovered and thwarted an operation by the… Ukrainian Ministry of Defence and its British supervisors to steal a Russian MiG-31 high-altitude supersonic fighter jet, which carries the Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched missile”.
It accused Kyiv of trying to “recruit Russian pilots” by promising them $3 million and citizenship of a Western country.
Kyiv planned to have the plane flown towards a NATO base in Constanta on the Black Sea, where it would have been “shot down” by air-defences, the FSB added.
The security services announced it had “thwarted the plans of the Ukrainian and British services to organise the large-scale provocation.”
State media published an FSB video showing a Russian soldier, face concealed, saying that he had received an email from a Ukrainian intelligence agent trying to recruit him for the plot.
In retaliation, the FSB noted Russian forces had hit a Ukrainian military intelligence centre and airfield in the Kyiv and Khmelnitsky regions.
Throughout its almost four-year Ukraine offensive, Russia has been hit with sabotage attacks — usually on its rail network — and regularly hands out heavy jail sentences to those accused of treason.
In August 2023, a Russian Mi-8 helicopter pilot defected to Ukraine after flying into Ukraine in an operation led by Kyiv’s security services.
His crew members were unaware of his intentions and were killed as they tried to escape, both Kyiv and Moscow had said at the time.
The pilot, Maxim Kuzminov, was found dead in Spain in February 2024.
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