FSB thwarts assassination attempt on head of Crimea
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The Russian intelligence unit says the perpetrator, a Russian national, was working for Ukraine's special services.
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Russian FSB member standing in an investigation site next to law enforcement servicemen (TASS)
An assassination attempt on the head of the Crimea Republic Sergey Aksyonov was thwarted by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), a statement by the intelligence agency said on Monday.
The federal agency said a Russian citizen working for Kiev stands behind the failed attack.
"An assassination attempt on the head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, organized by the Ukrainian special services, has been thwarted ... A citizen of Russia, born in 1988, who was recruited by the Ukrainian Security Council and took a course in reconnaissance and subversive activities on the territory of Ukraine, including training in mine blasting, was detained," the FSB said in a statement.
As Kiev's counteroffensive is weeks in, attacks on Crimea have intensified as taking control of the peninsula, which is one of the main logistic routes for the Russian military operating in Ukraine, is considered by the Ukrainian government as a primary objective since the start of the war.
But Western media and official reports are warning that Ukraine's war plans have not met expectations and that Ukrainian forces are underperforming compared to the Russian army.
On Saturday, the Ukrainian military attempted but failed to launch an attack near the hamlet of Berkhivka in the Bakhmut region of the Donetsk People's Republic, a source in the command of Russia's South group of soldiers said.
According to the statement, the onslaught included roughly 300 men, six tanks, and ten armored fighting vehicles.
Read more: Ukraine mounts losses on multiple fronts amid fragile counteroffensive
Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh warned last month that Ukraine's counteroffensive would not bring any good to Kiev, the United States, or NATO.
In an interview he gave to George Galloway, Hersh explained how "this [counteroffensive] isn't going to be good for Ukraine, it's not going to be good for NATO, it's certainly not going to be good for the Biden administration."
The journalist explained that the Ukrainian army is comprised of "so many disparate groups," comparable to 15 different dance teams that suddenly are forced to organize a routine together after practicing alone for a very long.
In a more recent report, Hersh said the US should consider Kiev's failure to cross over Russian defense lines as a “wake-up call”.
An informed official told famed journalist Hersh that "it would take [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky's military 117 years" to reassert Kiev's power over the lands which Russia now controls; which is approximately a surface area of 40,000 square miles.
The journalist stated that in the two weeks prior, the Ukrainian military had only captured 44 miles of terrain, the majority of which was open country situated before the first of Russia's multilayered defense lines.
Hersh urged US President Joe Biden to finally acknowledge, publicly, that “the estimated more than $150 billion that his administration has put up [to arming Ukraine] thus far turned out to be a very bad investment,” before adding that the “looming disaster in Ukraine… should be a wake-up call” for Washington lawmakers.
