A suspected subversive group of five men were detained at a Kyiv subway station on March 2 in possession of ammunition, a bayonet knife and narcotics. One of the suspects was a Belarusian citizen, the national police said in a statement on Facebook.
They had come to an undisclosed subway station ostensibly to spend the night and seek shelter.
Police operatives approached the men based on complaints from civilians also sheltering in the subway about the group’s “suspicious behavior.”
Upon an inspection, police found bullets hidden in a plush toy belonging to one of the men as well as four magazine clips and shutter with a striker to a Kalashnikov AK-74 automatic rifle. “Five cubes of drugs” were also found in their possession, the statement said.
Bullets found hidden inside a plush toy in the possession of a group of suspected subversives at an undisclosed subway station in Kyiv on March 2. (Credit: National Police of Ukraine)
At the same station, police arrested “an enemy saboteur” who was “transmitting the positions of the Ukrainian army to the enemy via messaging applications,” the police said.
The detained men were handed over to the Security Service for further investigation.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Forces entered from all directions, including neighboring Belarus whose proximity to Kyiv and other large cities is closer than to the Russian border.
More than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the invasion, the Emergencies Service said on March 2. Current Ukrainian military casualties are unknown.
Seventeen police officers have been killed and 50 wounded since the invasion started, according to the national police. Two more officers are missing.
Ukraine says more than 5,800 Russian military personnel have been killed so far. Russia isn’t officially disclosing its casualty figures.
Nearly 875,000 refugees have fled Ukraine, the UN Refugee Agency said on March 2.
