Russian authorities said Monday they have arrested three men suspected of planning to carry out attacks on two Jewish sites.
Two men from an unnamed central Asian country were arrested in Krasnoyarsk on suspicion of trying to use a homemade bomb to attack a synagogue, the state’s FSB security service said, adding that bomb materials were found in an abandoned building.
According to the security service, the plot was ostensibly part of a pro-Palestinian protest and bore similarities to a 2023 incident in Dagestan in which a mob of rioters stormed an airport looking to attack Jews after a flight had landed from Tel Aviv.
The agency’s statement said that while the attack would have used Palestinian suffering as a “pretext,” it was in fact intended “to incite ethnic hatred, with the aim of provoking mass protests on the territory of the Russian Federation.”
The FSB said that, separately, a Russian citizen was arrested on suspicion of planning to firebomb a Jewish community center in Pyatigorsk, near the Georgian border.
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According to the security agency, all three men were linked to a proscribed international terror organization, and are being charged with terror offenses. The organization they’re allegedly linked to was not named.
Video of the arrests was shared by Russian state media.
The arrests came less than a week after a deadly terror attack on a synagogue in Manchester, England on Yom Kippur, in which two people were killed.
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