The 22-year-old had planned to assassinate a defense industry employee on behalf of Ukraine, according to the security service
A young woman in St. Petersburg has been caught placing a bomb under a car, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The suspect allegedly acted on orders from Ukraine and was targeting a defense industry employee.
In a statement on Thursday, the agency said that it had “disrupted the activities of a Russian citizen, born in 2002, who was involved in preparing a terrorist act on behalf of Ukrainian special services.”
“She was detained by FSB officers at the moment she was laying an improvised explosive device under the car of the intended target,” according to the agency, which released the video of the purported act and the arrest. The clip shows the woman walking with a phone in her hand, and then sliding an unidentified package under a Mercedes SUV.
After being arrested, she initially claimed she had merely been tasked with tracking the vehicle, but seconds later acknowledged that she had also “tried to plant some kind of a device” under it.
According to the FSB, in June 2024, the woman reached out to Ukrainian special services, telling them “she was ready to participate in sabotage and terrorist activities in exchange for help leaving [Russia] and obtaining citizenship in an EU country.”
While carrying out tasks for her supervising officer, the woman painted pro-Ukrainian slogans in public places in Moscow Region and tried to set fire to a railway facility, the FSB said. In April 2025, she allegedly traveled to St. Petersburg to follow an unnamed defense industry employee, planning to blow up his car with an improvised explosive device.
Moscow has accused Ukrainian special services of hatching numerous sabotage and assassination plots targeting Russian officials and opinion leaders.
In December 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops, was killed in Moscow by a bomb attached to a scooter; Kiev later claimed responsibility for the assassination.
