Russian FSB releases video showing violent arrests of women accused of planning terrorist attacks for Ukrainian intelligence

Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers have arrested four women in Sevastopol, Voronezh, and Rostov-on-Don on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks against senior Russian military officials and fuel and energy infrastructure. According to the state news service Interfax, the FSB claims the suspects were recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services.

The agency alleges that the detainees were trained in Ukraine in explosives handling, small arms use, drone operation, and counter-surveillance techniques. During searches, the FSB reported seizing a “significant amount” of explosives, electric detonators, bomb-making instructions, and “means of communication with Ukrainian handlers.”

A video released by the FSB shows security officers in Rostov-on-Don storming a cafe, with one of them tackling a young woman behind the counter. “Face on the floor, bitch, on the floor!” another officer shouts.

In the clip, one detainee says she was recruited by a Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) officer in 2023. Another states that she gathered information on the residences and vehicles of “senior Russian Defense Ministry officials, high-ranking government figures, and their families.”

A third detainee claims she was recruited at the Ukrainian Embassy in the Czech Republic. She says she later traveled to Zaporizhzhia, where she was trained in firearms and covert operations, before being sent to Sevastopol in 2023. There, she purportedly joined a Russian volunteer battalion “under SBU orders” and was tasked with planting explosives in a military officer’s office. The fourth detainee says she was recruited in 2023 and underwent training in Kyiv.