In Moscow on February 28, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had thwarted an assassination attempt on Tikhon Shevkunov, a prominent priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, by Ukraine's military intelligence service.
There has been no immediate response from Kyiv regarding the accusation.
Shevkunov, often referred to as "Putin's confessor" in Russian media reports without confirmation, has had a public association with President Vladimir Putin since the late 1990s. In 2023, he was appointed metropolitan of Crimea after Russia's annexation of the region from Ukraine in 2014.
The FSB reported that it had apprehended a Russian and a Ukrainian individual connected to the assassination plot and had seized an improvised explosive device. The agency stated that the two unnamed suspects confessed to the crime.
According to the FSB, the two suspects, allegedly recruited by Ukraine through the Telegram messaging service, had been planning the assassination since mid-2024 with the intention of carrying it out in Moscow.
Ukraine has been linked to several assassinations in Russia since the commencement of the conflict in 2022, including those of pro-Moscow Ukrainian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April 2023 and the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Troops, Igor Kirillov, in December 2024.