Security Service of Ukraine reports prevented terrorist attacks

An explosive device that a Luhansk resident intended to detonate in Kyiv contained 500 injurious components, said on Dec. 24 Markian Lubkivskiy, a spokesman for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The device had a three-tiered explosive system, contained three kilograms of TNT and was built by an expert, Lubkivskiy said. The Luhansk resident was arrested on Dec. 19 and was directed by the Main Reconnaissance Administration of the Joint Staff of Russia, the SBU reported.

The SBU arrested on Dec. 24 a sabotage group that planned attacks in the Dnipropetrovsk region, who were directed by local Communist Party members operating from the occupied territory of Donbas, Lubkivskiy said. They planned to blow up and set fire to banks, capture arms from military sites and set off explosions in crowded areas, he said. Searches of their residents uncovered 400 grams of TNT, 24 homemade explosives, grenades and electronic detonators.

SBU counter-reconnaissance agents prevented an explosion by saboteurs of one of the biggest cache of arms in the Dontesk region, Lubkivskiy reported. The five saboteurs possessed 45 kilograms of TNT and were trained by separatists based in the Donetsk city of Horlivka and directed by Russian intelligence agents. The arms were stored in a salt mine in the city of Artemivsk and the saboteurs gained the information from soldiers who were supposed to be guarding the cache. They also planned explosions in the city’s residential areas.

A Luhansk region resident and head of a Ukrainian special forces veterans organization has acknowledged his role in recruiting and dispatching Russian mercenaries to the Donbas war in the Russian humanitarian convoys, reported the Ukrayinska Pravda news site, citing a Yekaterinburg news site. Since June, Vladimir Efimov said he has dispatched six groups of 15-30 mercenaries to Donetsk, consisting of special forces, and two groups of 30 mercenaries to Luhansk, consisting of amateur and rookie fighters.

Efimov said he began recruiting mercenaries in Russia “after the Maidan, still before the annexation of Crimea,” the report said. He admitted that he organized the dispatch from Russia of some of the unidentified green soldiers that emerged in Crimea during the annexation, whom the Russian government claimed at the time were native Crimeans.

Zenon Zawada: Ukraine’s security forces are doing a solid job in preventing terrorist acts, given their limited resources and overwhelming responsibilities. So far, no significant Russian-sponsored terrorist attack has claimed any lives in Ukraine’s major cities, which is to the SBU’s credit.

These reports indicate pro-Russian forces will continue to attempt acts of terror and sabotage in the Ukrainian mainland, in addition to the military conflict in the Donbas region. However, given the solid work of law enforcement so far, we see the terror threat as secondary to economic struggles and domestic political rivalry.