MOSCOW: Russia said on Monday it had arrested a German woman with a bomb in her backpack who planned to blow up up a services facility in a Ukrainian plot.

Moscow has arrested dozens of people throughout the four-year war, mostly its own citizens, over allegations of planning sabotage attacks for Kyiv.

There have been several high-profile arrests of Western citizens since Russia ordered its troops into Ukraine — typically on espionage charges that are widely seen as baseless, with those detained later swapped in exchange for Russians jailed abroad.

Detentions of Western citizens for carrying out or preparing actual attacks are much rarer. The FSB security agency said the woman, born in 1969, had been dragged into the alleged plot by a citizen from a Central Asian country, who was working on orders from Ukraine.

She was detained and found with an improvised explosive device in her bag in the Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk, the FSB said.

The FSB said it had “prevented a terrorist attack planned by the Kyiv regime against a law enforcement facility in the Stavropol region, involving a German citizen born in 1969,” the agency said in a statement.

The FSB said the device — which contained an explosive charge equivalent to 1.5 kilograms (three pounds) of TNT — was supposed to be detonated remotely, killing the German woman.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2026