Russia says it thwarts Ukraine-backed murder plot against nationalist tycoon

LONDON (Reuters) -Russia’s FSB security service said on Monday it had thwarted a Ukraine-backed car bomb attack against a prominent nationalist businessman who has been a cheerleader for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The FSB, Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, said it had intervened to stop the plot, which it said involved attaching a remote-controlled homemade bomb to the underside of a car used by Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev.

Russia’s Zvezda TV channel shared a video from the FSB that appeared to show a man approaching a parked car and momentarily reaching under it. It later published a video of a robot appearing to remove an object from under a car.

Reuters was unable to verify the videos.

In a statement, the FSB accused the Ukrainian security services of being behind the assassination attempt which it said had been organised on their behalf by Ukraine-based Russian far-right activist Denis Kapustin.

It said a criminal case had been launched against Kapustin for alleged terrorist offences and illicit trafficking in explosives.

Kapustin, also known as Denis Nikitin, is a former mixed martial arts fighter. He referred a Reuters request for comment to his superiors in the Russian Volunteer Corps, the group that claimed responsibility for last week’s incursion into Russia’s southern Bryansk region from Ukraine in which he was also involved. His commander said he had no immediate comment.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The FSB said it had also thwarted an attempt by Kapustin to commit a sabotage attack on an oil and gas facility in Russia’s Volgograd region last year.

Malofeyev, the target of the alleged murder plot, is a supporter of President Vladimir Putin who owns a conservative TV channel that promotes nationalist views and strongly supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Malofeyev said on his Telegram channel he was fine and that nobody had been hurt in the attempt on his life, which he said would not alter what he called his “patriotic position.”

“I have no personal hatred even for those people who want me dead,” he said.

“But as many of our saints have said, one must forgive one’s personal enemies and crush the enemies of the Fatherland. So we will fight against you until our victory. And nothing will stop us.”

The FSB said the plot against Malofeyev used the same methods employed last summer to murder Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent nationalist ideologue, in a car bomb attack outside Moscow which it blamed on Kyiv.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said “deliberate inaction” by international human rights structures allowed President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to carry out such attacks.

“We also have no doubt,” she said in a statement on the ministry’s website, “that such actions are carried out with the tacit consent, if not with the prompting of his Western handlers.”

Ukraine denied involvement in Dugina’s murder.

(Reporting by Caleb Davis, Mark Trevelyan, Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska and Elaine Monaghan; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Richard Chang)