The Russian leader claimed on Wednesday, “There is reason to believe that the potential of third countries of Western intelligence services is involved in the preparation of such sabotage and terrorist attacks,” though he did not provide any details.
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. does not “enable nor do we encourage the Ukrainians to strike outside of Ukraine.”
Putin alleged that “terrorist attacks are regularly carried out against government officials and law enforcement agencies, journalists, public figures, school and university teachers. … Moreover, neo-Nazis and their accomplices operate not only on the territory of the new subjects of the Federation, but also commit crimes in other regions,” which is an indirect reference to the Ukrainian regions Russia said they have annexed, despite international condemnation, and the rest of the Russian regions.
Pro-Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe earlier this week. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) said the explosion involved agents of the Ukrainian special services and associates of the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russian officials arrested a young woman named Daria Trepova who has been accused of delivering a figurine that detonated in the midst of a party at the cafe, which is owned by Wagner Group Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Kirby said the United States’s intelligence to Ukraine has focused on helping them on the battlefield and within its borders, not in Russian territory.
“[F]rom the early days of this war, we have been providing intelligence and information support to the Ukrainian armed forces to enable them to better defend themselves, to conduct operations, and to continue to try to claw back territory that the Russians illegally took from them when they invaded – actually, even since 2014. And I won’t get into the details of what that intelligence is or how it’s delivered, but it is very much intended to help … them defend their territory,” he explained.
The explosion is the second bombing that appeared to target a proponent of the war. Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent imperialist political philosopher named Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing in August.
