Ukraine’s SBU accuses Russian Volunteer Corps deputy commander Stepan Kaplunov of working for the FSB and plotting an Independence Day assassination. He says he was tortured into confessing.

Ukraine's Security Service says Stepan Kaplunov, deputy commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, was working with Russia's FSB and had been tasked with plotting an assassination timed to Ukraine's Independence Day, a plot the SBU says it foiled.

The SBU released a video of Kaplunov describing his recruitment by an FSB-linked individual, and says he cooperated after admitting contacts found on his phone, sparing him pretrial restrictions. The Russian Volunteer Corps countered with its own video in which Kaplunov says he was abducted and tortured into confessing, a claim echoed by his lawyer.

The dueling accounts follow a September 2 shootout in Kyiv between SBU officers and Ukraine's military intelligence agency, which the SBU attributes to interference with its investigation connected to Kaplunov, and which Kaplunov's lawyer suggests the confession video was timed to overshadow.

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