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Russia accuses Ukraine of armed Crimea incursion Russia says it has foiled Ukrainian 'terror attack' plot in Crimea
(about 1 hour later)
Russia’s federal security service says it has thwarted an armed Ukrainian incursion into Crimea designed to target critical infrastructure, and that a Russian soldier and FSB employee had been killed in clashes. Russia’s security service has said it had thwarted “terrorist attacks” in Crimea by Ukrainian military intelligence and beaten back an armed assault by Kiev’s forces.
The FSB said the attempted incursions had taken place over the weekend. The FSB said one of its officers was killed in armed clashes while arresting “terrorists” on Saturday night while a Russian soldier was killed in clashes with “sabotage-terrorist” groups sent by the Ukrainian defence ministry on Monday.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian defence intelligence denied the accusation. Yuriy Tandit, an adviser to the head of Ukraine’s security agency, denied the allegations, telling Interfax-Ukraine news agency that Kiev had no intention of taking back the territory “by force”.
“This is fake information,” a spokesman told Reuters. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the frontier between mainland Ukraine and Crimea – which Russia annexed in 2014, did not report the incident.
More details soon … But it said traffic was halted this week and border guards appeared to be on “heightened alert”.
In its statement on Wednesday, the FSB – which controls Russia’s borders – said it had “foiled terrorist attacks on the territory of Crimea prepared by the intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian defence ministry”.
It said the aim of the sabotage and terrorist attacks was to destabilise the social and political situation before elections in September in Russia and Crimea.
The security agency said several people had been detained, including a Ukrainian military intelligence officer, and a cache of explosives was discovered in raids on Saturday and Sunday.
“On the night of 8 August 2016 special operations forces from the Ukrainian defence ministry carried out two more attempts to make a breakthrough by sabotage-terrorist groups,” it said.
The assault included “massive firing from the side of the neighbouring state and armoured vehicles” but was beaten back by the Russian authorities, the statement said.
Russia seized the Black Sea region from Ukraine in March 2014 after the Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by pro-EU protests in Kiev.
The move shattered ties between the two ex-Soviet neighbours and resulted in relations between Moscow and the west plummeting to their lowest point since the cold war.
The FSB said it had stepped up security measures around the peninsula following the alleged incidents.