MOSCOW: Russia’s FSB security service said on Tuesday (Jul 18) it had arrested a Russian woman it suspected of collecting information on a “critical infrastructure facility” at the order of Ukraine’s intelligence services.
It did not name the facility, but a surveillance video which Russian media said was taken by the FSB showed the suspect using her phone to film near a hydroelectric power plant in the town of Uglich in Russia’s Yaroslavl region north of Moscow.
She is then shown being arrested in her office by masked FSB and police agents. A court on Saturday ordered the suspect to be detained for two months, the RIA news agency reported.
Baza, a Russian news outlet which sometimes publishes material from the FSB, released a message exchange between the suspect and a purported Ukrainian coordinator in which the woman agrees to supply the map coordinates of local railway lines, military recruitment offices and the hydroelectric plant.
In the exchange, the authenticity of which Reuters was not able to verify, the suspect writes of wanting Ukrainian drones to strike deep inside Russia in order to undermine support for President Vladimir Putin.