Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded on Sunday evening that Ukraine arrest the head of its own security services and extradite him to Russia.
The ministry issued a statement blaming Vasyl Malyuk, the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine, for an explosion at a bridge in Crimea that Russia said killed five people in October 2022.
The statement called the explosion one of several “barbaric bomb attacks,” mentioning them alongside the devastating Moscow concert hall attack in March 2022 that killed at least 140 people.
Russia has accused Kyiv of facilitating the concert hall attack, with leader Vladimir Putin saying that Ukraine’s authorities allowed the gunmen to pass through its borders. No evidence was presented to support this accusation, and the terrorist group ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the killings.
As for the bridge explosion in Crimea, Malyuk said publicly in July 2023 that his agency was behind the attack.
“It is one of our actions, namely the destruction of the Crimean bridge on October 8 last year,” he told Ukrainian TV, per The Associated Press.
Before this admission, Ukraine was already widely regarded as responsible for the bridge’s destruction.
Russia’s foreign ministry described the bridge attack as a terrorist act, and said it told Kyiv to “immediately arrest and extradite every person implicated.”
Moscow and Kyiv have been engaged in open war since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Ukraine’s security service told local media that Russia’s claims of Kyiv-sanctioned terrorism were “especially cynical on the anniversary of the liberation of the town of Bucha and the atrocities committed by the Russians there.”
“So any words by the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry are worthless,” it said in a statement, per Ukrainska Pravda.
The security service added that Putin himself is subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, over accusations of his forces carrying out war crimes against children in Ukraine.
The press team for the Security Service of Ukraine did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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