Russia's FSB Foils Terror Plot Against Volgograd Pipeline Coordinated by Ukrainian Security Services

Moscow's ongoing special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine has been accompanied by Ukrainian artillery and missile attacks against Russian regions which border on the country, and plots organized by the Ukrainian security services deep inside Russia targeting both military and civilian infrastructure.

The Federal Security Service (Russian acronym FSB) has foiled a Ukraine-linked plot targeting an oil pipeline in Russia's Volgograd Region, the agency has announced.

"After conducting active search measures, the FSB prevented an attempt by the Ukrainian special services to prepare a diversionary terrorist act against an oil and gas complex facility in the Volgograd Region," the FSB's center for public relations told reporters Monday.

Two Russian right-wing radicals from the neo-Nazi group Restrukt were liquidated after offering armed resistance while trying to blow up an oil pipeline. A high-powered improvised explosive device and a pair of non-lethal pistols converted to fire live ammunition were seized at the scene of the crime, the FSB said.

The FSB said that the Restrukt operatives were operating under the direction and guidance of the Ukrainian security services, with two of the neo-Nazi group's members, 35-year-old Russian national Andrei Chuenkov and 33-year-old Ukrainian national Yuri Ionov, taking part in hostilities against Russian and Donbass forces in the Uragan and Azov* ultra-right paramilitary battalions.

"Security agencies, in cooperation with other law enforcement, have organized measures to curb the criminal activities of Chuenkov and Ionov, and to search for their accomplices in Russia," the FSB said.

The crisis which unfolded in Ukraine in 2014, when Kiev kicked off a military operation to try to crush independence supporters in the eastern part of the country, prompted thousands of neo-Nazis and other ultra-right radicals from across the post-Soviet space and around the world to join the fighting, most of them serving on the Ukrainian side in specially created volunteer battalions. Since the escalation of the crisis in February, even more foreign volunteers have flooded into Ukraine, for money or out of ideological convictions. Foreign volunteers have also joined the ranks of Donbass forces, most of them on the left politically and/or Russophiles.

* Deemed a terrorist organization by the Russian Supreme Court.