Members of Russian secret service cell eliminated in Ukrainian attack, one month after Operation Spider Web

Ukrainian intelligence agency SBU on Sunday killed members of a Russian secret service cell accused of assassinating a colonel belonging to the agency earlier this week.

According to the SBU, the special operation targeted an “agent-combat group” belonging to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), who it believes were responsible for the death of Ivan Voronych, Colonel of the Security Service (SBU) near Kyiv on Thursday.

“The results of the secret rogue, active and counter-intelligence approaches (of the FSB) were clearly revealed ... I’d like to remind you that the only prospect of an enemy on the territory of Ukraine is death!” said Lieutenant General Vasyl Malyuk, Head of the SBU, in a Telegram statement.

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Moscow's authorities have not yet acknowledged Sunday's operation, a silence similar to the one that followed Ukraine's Operation Spider Web, one of its most daring precision strikes deep into Russian territory. However, Moscow later spoke out about the operation, downplaying the damage to their military aircraft and vowing retaliation.

SBU head Malyuk, who has seen a number of high-profile successes over the course of the three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict, had also been a key member in the planning of the precision strikes, as well as the subsequent underwater bombing of a bridge connecting (Russian-occupied) Crimean peninsula to Russia.

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The statement added that two people—a man and a woman—were suspected of having killed Colonel Voronych. However, it did not say how many suspected FSB agents were killed in the operation on Sunday.

“Their curator ordered them to follow the SBU spy agent (Voronych), set a daily schedule, and transfer routes. For a long time, the Russian officer passed on the coordinates of the cache (hiding place) to the dispatchers, where he found a pistol with a silencer (the murder weapon),” the statement added.

Earlier this week, on the morning of July 10 at Kyiv's Golosiivsky district, a man approached Colonel Voronych and fired five shots from the pistol, fleeing the scene afterward, according to a Kyiv Independent report. Voronych, as a result, died on the scene.

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