Russia's FSB Security Service said on Friday it arrested figures from two churches suspected of planning to kill a priest near President Vladimir Putin on orders from Ukrainian spy agencies.
There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the allegations.
The target is Tikhon Shevknov, 66, whom Russian media has long described as “Putin's confession.”
He has maintained his acquaintance with Putin since the late 1990s, and the Kremlin says that the two men know each other well.
The Kremlin condemned the plot to allegedly assassinated.
“It's clear that the Kiev administration will not be reducing from anything,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“In this case there is nothing sacred. This has been confirmed again.”
In 2023, Shevknov was appointed as the Metropolitan High Church in Crimea, a peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In a statement, the FSB said it had detained two men in mid-2024, saying it had been adopted by Ukrainian military intelligence on Telegram Messenger Services.
The FSB said it had seized an improvised explosive device and two fake Ukrainian passports.
One of the men, Nikita Ivankovic, is a Russian clergyman in a Moscow church.
The other was a Ukrainian named Dennis Popovich, born in the western city of Shernibutosi, working as an assistant to Shevknov.
Authorities have released videos of both men confessing the plot.
They spoke hesitantly, and it was not clear under what circumstances the confession was obtained.
Popovich said he was recruited to monitor Shevknov's movements and threatened with the murder of his relatives unless he complied.
He then said he was tasked with finding an accomplice to “eliminate” Shevknov.
He said the plan was to plant bombs in a 14th century Sreckensky monastery in Moscow, where Shevknov excelled until 2018.
In his confession, Ivankovic said the men were being fed homemade bombs to make the attack.
The video showed investigators recovering the box and fake passport from the box's hideout.
Ukraine has been responsible for many assassinations in Russia since the start of the war. Most recently, in December, the murder of Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's nuclear, biology and chemical protection forces.
