Explosive Device Hidden in Religious Icon Neutralized in Sevastopol

Photo: ria.ru

SEVASTOPOL — Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on August 25 that it had prevented a terrorist attack in Crimea allegedly orchestrated by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), according to reporting from RIA-Novosti. A 54-year-old woman from the Volgograd Province was detained after unknowingly transporting an Orthodox icon rigged with an improvised explosive device to an FSB office in Sevastopol.

According to investigators, the woman had been deceived through an elaborate scheme beginning in May, when SBU operatives posing as Russian officials convinced her to take out loans totaling more than 3 million rubles. She later followed instructions to deliver the icon, unaware it contained a one-kilogram explosive device set to detonate via coded signal.

The FSB reported that the plan would have killed both its personnel and the woman herself, who had been ordered to transmit the activation code. She was arrested before the device could be triggered. A court in Simferopol has ordered her held in custody for two months.

The Crimean Metropolia condemned the use of a sacred object in the plot, calling it both a crime and a “grave sacrilege.” In a statement, church leaders urged categorical public rejection of such acts, stressing the need to protect religious symbols as part of humanity’s cultural and spiritual heritage.

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