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

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.”