A captured Ukrainian soldier has said that the UK prepared the Ukrainian military for sabotage targeting the marine station platform 17 drilling rig in the Black Sea, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, the FSB said that together with the Defense Ministry, thwarted the landing of the UK-trained Ukrainian sabotage groups on the Tendrovskaya Kosa in the Kherson Region. [The captured soldier] testified about the development by UK instructors and the conduct of sabotage by the special forces of the armed forces of Ukraine on the marine station platform 17 drilling rig to seize technical means of accompanying flights of unmanned aerial vehicles of the Russian armed forces … during the assault, no equipment of interest to the UK was found by Ukrainian saboteurs. The communications station located on the platform was blown up,” the FSB said in a statement.
Western security services, in particular the UK’s SAS and SBS special air and naval services, have been training Ukrainian soldiers to carry out sabotage attacks against the Russian fleet and the Crimean infrastructure, an FSB officer who chose to remain anonymous clarified in a video posted by the service.
However, they neither plan the operations properly,nor make the effort to protect Ukraine’s military personnel, as evident from the testimony of the detained Ukrainian marine, he added.
“Using Ukraine as a firing range, and its service people as an expendable product for testing and upgrading newly developed arms and tactics of their use, the British security services do not bother planning thoroughly thought-out terrorist acts and precisely worked-out operations,” the FSB officer said.
Furthermore, the United Kingdom is actively providing Ukrainian special forces with intelligence equipment and new types of explosives, including experimental samples. “In addition to training sabotage groups, the United Kingdom is actively supplying intelligence equipment, new types of explosives, including experimental samples, to the special units of the Ukrainian armed forces,” the FSB’s employee said. Previously, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Defense Ministry prevented the landing of Ukrainian sabotage groups trained by the UK on Tendrovskaya Kosa in the Kherson Region.
During the landing attempt, the sabotage groups were destroyed, while one Ukrainian soldier was captured alive. According to the FSB, the captured Ukrainian soldier confirmed that the saboteurs were trained in the UK.
The captured soldier also named the UK instructors who had been training Ukrainian servicepeople for a sabotage on the Tendrivska Kosa. Ukrainian soldiers were receiving training at the 5 RIFLES military base near the UK city of Salisbury, the captured man said.
The saboteurs were told to either destroy Russian soldiers or capture them in the course of the operation on the Tendrivska Kosa, the man added.
The sabotage was planned mostly as a propagandistic act and could not affect the situation on the battlefield in any case, an anonymous officer of the Russian Security Service (FSB) said.
The FSB said that the Special Boat Service, the UK’s maritime special forces unit, is supervising the activities of the Ukrainian military division behind such operations, which “indicates the direct involvement of the United Kingdom in the conflict.”
