MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday apprehended a Belarusian national for allegedly placing explosives on two trains on an important part of a Siberian railway near the Chinese border, on Ukraine’s orders.
The arrest came around a week after officials reported traffic complications in a tunnel on the Baikal-Amur mainline, about 5,500 kilometres east of Moscow.
Ukrainian sources said last week that Kyiv’s SBU was behind the sabotage, according to the western media.
Russia’s FSB security service said that on the territory of the Omsk region, a national of Belarus born in 1971 was apprehended, for being behind explosions on 29 and 30 November on two trains carrying oil products travelling along the routes of the Baikal-Amur railway line in the Buryatia region.
Moscow said the curator of the accused was a Lithuania-based Belarusian who it said worked for Ukrainian secret services.
It said the “terrorist act” was aimed at destroying important transport-energy infrastructure.
Russian media releases video
Russian media released a footage of a uniformed FSB officer escorting the man, whose face is not shown, through the snow into a building.
In the footage, he says that someone had asked him to bring a parcel in exchange for money into Russia and that he was told it contained a mine to blow up some trains.
In the FSB-controlled video, the accused said that he agreed.
The powerful security force said it was working to find out if others had aided the suspect.
Railway sabotage has been reported inside Russia as well as its ally Belarus during Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine.
