Five people were killed and at least 20 injured when a homemade bomb ripped through a Moscow restaurant where Russian Aerospace Forces commander Alexander Chaiko was celebrating his birthday.
Russian authorities said a young woman delivered the device and also died in the blast, but the Kremlin has been unusually quiet beyond classifying the explosion as a terrorist attack.
The bombing came as the FSB said it had disrupted 78 alleged Ukraine-linked attacks this year, a figure critics and rights lawyers say reflects inflated or fabricated cases meant to prove the agency’s usefulness to Vladimir Putin.
At least 240 teenagers have been arrested on terrorism charges since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while the official terrorists and extremists list has grown to more than 21,000 people this year.
Critics say the attack underscores a broader shift in which the FSB, once focused on external threats, now uses terrorism narratives to police domestic politics and shield itself from blame for security failures.
Are Russia's thwarted terror plots genuine threats, or elaborate fabrications designed to tighten Putin's grip on a heavily surveilled nation?
What hidden transnational threats are prompting an unprecedented Moscow meeting between the FBI Director and Russia's most powerful intelligence chief?
Will the Kremlin's aggressive pursuit of tech billionaires and dating chatbots successfully force citizens into a totally monitored digital ecosystem?