The welcome to the new American ambassador in Moscow was icy. President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused Western secret services of being involved in “terrorist” attacks in Russia. His Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky was meanwhile in Warsaw for an official visit during which Poland promised to ask for additional security guarantees to be granted to Ukraine at the next NATO summit.
“There is every reason to think” that the capacities of third countries and Western secret services are “involved in the preparation of acts of sabotage and terrorism”, both in the Ukrainian territories controlled by Moscow and in Russia, has said Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting of his Security Council.
Arrest of a Ukrainian pilot
Installed alongside the leaders installed by Russia of the four Ukrainian regions which it has claimed for annexation in 2022, the Russian president accused Kiev of committing in these territories “serious crimes against the civilians who live there, sparing no one ” . Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian security forces to “do everything in their power to ensure the safety of the local population”.
A few hours after the intervention of the Head of State, the Russian security services (FSB) announced the arrest of a Ukrainian pilot, whose small plane crashed in a border area of Ukraine. “The plane crashed near the village of Butovsk in the Bryansk region for unknown reasons. The pilot [un citoyen ukrainien]who tried to flee to Ukrainian territory, was arrested by a unit of border guards,” they said.
Trapped statuette
Vladimir Putin’s accusations also come three days after the death of a famous Russian military blogger, killed in a bomb attack in a cafe in Saint Petersburg (northwest). Maxime Fomin, known for his fierce support for the Russian offensive in Ukraine, died after accepting a booby-trapped statuette from a young Russian, Daria Trepova, who was arrested and remanded in custody on Tuesday.
Moscow has accused kyiv and “agents” of imprisoned opponent Alexei Navalny of being involved in the assassination. Ukrainian officials, for their part, considered that it was an internal settling of accounts in the circles supporting the offensive in Russia. Ukraine has previously been accused of several other targeted assassinations both in the occupied regions and in Russia itself, as well as sabotage operations.
“Geopolitical Confrontation”
The spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, said on Wednesday that the assassination of Maxime Fomin would be “one of the subjects of discussion” at the UN Security Council, of which Russia took over the rotating presidency on Saturday. . A few hours earlier, Vladimir Putin had castigated the United States during a ceremony to hand over credentials to the Kremlin, in the presence of the American ambassador and the envoy of the EU.
Regretting a “deep crisis” in relations between Moscow and Washington, he questioned the “United States’ support” for the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, which “ultimately led to the current Ukrainian crisis”. He then accused the European Union of having been “at the origin of a geopolitical confrontation with Russia”, noting that relations with the EU “have deteriorated sharply in recent years”.