FSB says it caught ‘criminal group’ planning to use radioactive material to ‘stage incidents involving WMDs’ and ‘discredit Russia’ in Ukraine

Source: Meduza

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reported Friday that it has arrested five people who it “caught red-handed” attempting to take a kilogram of cesium-137, a radioactive material, out of the country.

According to the FSB's Public Relations Center, a “criminal group” that was “acting in the interests of a foreign client” intended to illegally obtain the material for $3.5 million before transferring it out of Russia “for the purpose of harming Russian interests in the special military operation.”

The agency added that the suspects planned to use the cesium-137 to “stage incidents involving weapons of mass destruction with the aim of discrediting Russia.”