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Russia's FSB Says It Shoots Dead a Man Planning an ‘Act of Terrorism' 

Riot police officers guard the area near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP)
Riot police officers guard the area near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP)
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Russia's FSB Says It Shoots Dead a Man Planning an ‘Act of Terrorism' 

Riot police officers guard the area near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP)
Riot police officers guard the area near the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God Soothe My Sorrows, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP)

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that it had shot dead a Belarusian man who had been planning "an act of terrorism" on behalf of Ukraine in the northern Russian region of Karelia, the RIA state news agency reported.

The FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said it had "seized weapons and an improvised explosive device" (IED) after the shootout.

RIA cited the FSB as saying that the man had intended to blow up an administrative building in the city of Olonets, some 155 miles (250 km) from the Finnish border.

"During the arrest, the criminal opened fire from a firearm at special services officers and was neutralized during the clash," RIA cited the FSB as saying.

RIA published video footage showing several FSB agents entering a dilapidated, unlit building in a remote area, shouting "come out" and then firing shots.

The video then showed a man who appeared to be dead lying on the ground with a handgun next to his body.

The FSB said the IED had been made using a plastic explosive manufactured in Britain and had a US-made detonator.

Citing unnamed sources, Russian media reported the man's name as Nikolai Alekseev, a 49-year-old activist from Belarus who had participated in opposition protests there in 2020.

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Russia Awaits Ukraine's Confirmation on Planned Exchange of Dead Fighters, Officials Say

A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
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Russia Awaits Ukraine's Confirmation on Planned Exchange of Dead Fighters, Officials Say

A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

Russian officials said Sunday that Moscow is still awaiting official confirmation from Ukraine that a planned exchange of 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action will take place, reiterating allegations that Kyiv had postponed the swap.

On the front line in the war, Russia said that it had pushed into Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russian state media quoted Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, a representative of the Russian negotiating group, as saying that Russia delivered the first batch of 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to the exchange site at the border and is waiting for confirmation from Ukraine, but that there were “signals” that the process of transferring the bodies would be postponed until next week, The AP news reported.

Citing Zorin on her Telegram channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova asked whether it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's “personal decision not to take the bodies of the Ukrainians” or whether “someone from NATO prohibited it."

Russia and Ukraine each accused the other on Saturday of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, which was agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress toward ending the war.

Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, led the Russian delegation. Medinsky said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap. In a Telegram post on Saturday, he said that refrigerated trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the border when the news came.

In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing “dirty games” and manipulating facts.

According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps, no date had been set for repatriating the bodies. In a statement on Saturday, the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn’t correspond to agreements reached on Monday.