The Ukrainian Defence Ministry has described as an act of provocation the Russian Federal Security Service's (FSB) statement that Ukrainian intelligence was preparing terror acts in annexed Crimea, the ministry's press secretary, Vladyslav Seleznyov, has said, according to the Krym Realii website.
He said the FSB allegations on the liquidation of the Ukrainian agent network in Crimea are false. He is confident that the FSB has deliberately played for time for four days to make these statements.
"The FSB has waited for four days before the information which has been shared in social networks emerged. Literally yesterday, a representative of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate, Vadim Skibitskyy, made a statement that the FSB was holding an antiterror exercise on the territory of occupied Crimea. It is quite possible that this report fits the information component of this exercise," Seleznyov said.
Earlier on 10 August, the Russian FSB accused the Ukrainian Defence Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate of preparing terror acts in Crimea. It said that one of the organisers of these terror acts, a resident of Zaporizhzhya Region, was detained and now testifying. The FSB said that a group of Ukrainian saboteurs was detected near Armyansk in the early hours of 7 August. An FSB employee was killed in a shoot-out, it said.