Russian man confesses in video to Moscow car bomb attack on military officer at Ukraine’s behest

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s RIA state news agency on Friday broadcast a video in which a Russian citizen said he had blown up a military officer in his car in Moscow earlier this week at the behest of the SBU Ukrainian security service.

Reuters could not independently verify the handcuffed man’s assertions and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

The Kommersant newspaper reported on Wednesday that a car bomb had injured an officer from Russia’s military intelligence agency in northern Moscow. Other media said the injured man was a regular military officer.  

Russia’s interior ministry said at the time that two people had been injured in the blast and that a criminal case had been opened. CCTV footage showed a Toyota Land Cruiser parked outside what looked like a residential complex exploding into a fireball.  

Turkish authorities said late on Wednesday they had arrested a Russian citizen suspected of the attack in Bodrum after he had flown in from Moscow. 

On Friday, Russia’s FSB security service said in a statement that the man, whom it named as Yevgeny Serebryakov, had been brought to Russia from Turkey and handed over to investigators.

In a video released by RIA, which had been edited in places to remove certain references, Serebyrakov said he had been recruited by Ukrainian intelligence last year and asked to kill “an officer.”

He said in the video that he had gathered the components to make a homemade bomb at his Ukrainian handler’s request and placed it beneath the unnamed officer’s vehicle. 

He was promised Ukrainian citizenship and $10,000-20,000 dollars as a reward for his work, he said.   

(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 6)