Russia detains Moldovan suspect over Engels officer shooting linked to Kyiv

Moscow,UPDATED: Sep 8, 2026 19:10 IST

Russian authorities said on Tuesday they had detained a suspect over last week's shooting of a senior military officer, describing it as the latest in a series of attacks on people linked to the war in Ukraine. Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, said a 21-year-old Moldovan national had been held on suspicion of involvement in what it called an attempted assassination carried out at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence services.

The officer was shot at least six times on 3 September in the Probuzhdenie settlement on the outskirts of Engels in Russia's Saratov region, according to Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative Committee, which is also involved in the case. The officer, who has not been identified by the authorities, survived and remains in hospital. The Saratov region is home to a large air force base that hosts Russia's strategic bombers and has carried out attacks on Ukraine.

The FSB said the suspect had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence services in 2025 and arrived in Russia in June. It said he was detained in the southern Astrakhan region while trying to leave the country and return to Moldova. Petrenko said he had allegedly been offered US$ 70,000 to carry out the attack. The FSB said he faces charges of attempted murder and illegal arms trafficking. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian or Moldovan officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had referred to the attack on the day it happened, saying, "Wherever Russian criminals hide, they will be found, and today there is further confirmation of this fact – confirmation in the Saratov region."

The shooting follows a string of bombings in Russia targeting people involved in Moscow's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has blamed Kyiv for some of the blasts. In late August, a serviceman was killed and his wife was injured in a car bomb attack on the outskirts of St Petersburg. Three weeks earlier, the head of a factory supplying drones to the Russian military was seriously injured and his driver was killed when their car exploded outside Yekaterinburg, about 1,400 kilometres east of Moscow. In those cases, the authorities did not immediately say who they believed was behind the attacks. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin directed the FSB and other agencies to tighten security around military and government officials.

Kyiv has claimed responsibility for some attacks inside Russia. Ukraine's SBU security service said in 2024 that it had organised the killing of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, who headed the Russian military's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces. Kirillov was killed by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine's security service filed criminal charges against him. The shooting of the officer near Engels now adds to that wider pattern of attacks on figures linked to Russia's war effort.

With PTI Inputs

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