This is what we can call a daring request, especially in light of the geopolitical context. Russia announced this Sunday that it had asked Ukraine to extradite the head of the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) and other people who, according to it, are involved in “terrorist attacks” on its soil.
kyiv immediately rejected these requests, deemed “worthless” and “cynical”. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had asked Ukrainian authorities to “immediately arrest and extradite” SBU head Vasyl Maliuk and others, invoking two international conventions against terrorism.
“Organization of terrorist attacks” in Russia
According to Russian diplomacy, Vassyl Maliouk admitted to having “organized the bombing of the Crimean bridge in October 2022 and revealed details of the organization of other terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation”. “The Russian side demands that the Kiev regime immediately cease all support for terrorist activities, extradite those responsible and compensate the victims for the damage caused,” the statement added.
It is unclear how Russia conveyed these demands, as kyiv severed diplomatic ties with Moscow shortly after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The SBU called them “worthless” and “cynical.” “The statements about terrorism are particularly cynical coming from a terrorist country,” he said.
The specter of the Moscow attack
Earlier in the week, Vassyl Maliouk, 41, who has headed the SBU for a little over a year, had on Tuesday made a mockery of an arrest order issued against him by a Russian court, as part of an investigation on a deadly explosion in 2022 on the Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia to this annexed peninsula.
Crimea was annexed by Moscow in 2014 but is internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. These exchanges take place in a context where Moscow continues to assert that Kiev is involved in the attack on a concert hall on March 22 in the suburbs of Moscow, without having provided evidence and while the Islamic State (IS) group ‘claimed.