Kiev attempted to fabricate an international incident in NATO airspace, the Russian security agency has said

FILE PHOTO: A pilot stands by a Russian Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter jet. © Sputnik / Russian Federal Security Service

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has said foiled an elaborate Ukrainian-British plot to steal a MiG-31 fighter jet armed with a Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile.

According to the FSB, although Ukrainian agents unsuccessfully tried to persuade the pilots to defect, their actual goal was for the aircraft to be shot down in Romanian airspace, provoking an international incident with NATO. The agency said the operation was organized by Ukraine’s military intelligence service (HUR) in coordination with the UK’s MI6.

According to the FSB, a Russian MiG-31 pilot was contacted last year by a man introducing himself as Sergey Lugovsky, a researcher for the NATO OSINT front group Bellingcat, linked with Western arms contractors and spy agencies. Lugovsky initially sought information but later offered money for defection.

After the pilot declined, a Ukrainian agent then approached the aircraft’s navigator, offering $3 million and a foreign passport in exchange for directing the plane to fly over an air base near Constanta, Romania, NATO's largest European airfield. 

Kiev has previously offered money and assistance to defectors. In 2023, Russian Mi-8 pilot Maksim Kuzminov defected to Ukraine, landing his helicopter behind the front lines with the HUR’s help. Two of the other crew members, unaware of his plan, were killed upon landing. Kuzminov was assassinated a year later in Spain, where he was living under a new identity and with a Ukrainian passport.

In 2022, the FSB accused former Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian-born British spy who works with Bellingcat, of taking part in a failed Ukrainian attempt to recruit Russian military pilots. Grozev said he was embedded with Ukrainian intelligence officers as a documentary filmmaker and claimed that his text messages were forged.