Russia’s Federal Security Service announced on Monday that it had foiled a series of terrorist plots targeting Jewish religious sites in the country’s Krasnoyarsk and Stavropol regions.
According to an FSB statement cited by The Moscow Times, two citizens of Central Asian countries were detained in Krasnoyarsk for allegedly plotting to detonate an improvised explosive at a local synagogue.
In a second case, a Russian citizen was arrested in the southwestern city of Pyatigorsk on suspicion that he had been plotting to burn down a Jewish community building with Molotov cocktails.
The FSB said all three suspects were linked to a banned “international terrorist organization” and would be charged with terrorism offenses.
Footage released by state news agencies showed the arrest raids and what appeared to be explosive materials seized by Russian security agencies, as well as recorded confessions of the three suspects.
The FSB said that while the terrorist attacks were planned “under the pretext of protecting the interests of Palestinians who suffered during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” they were intended to stir interethnic tensions between Russian population groups.
According to the agency, the plots were “similar” to the Oct. 29, 2023, riots in Russia’s Dagestan region, in which hundreds of people stormed an airport after rumors circulated about an incoming flight from Israel.
That incident occurred against the backdrop of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1,200 people in Israel’s western Negev, which prompted Jerusalem’s war on the Islamist terror organization in Gaza.
In March, FSB officers also thwarted multiple terror plots targeting Jewish institutions in Moscow, including by an Islamic State cell.
