Rusia acusa a una bióloga del asesinato de un desertor ucraniano en Sebastopol

A 34-year-old woman named Margarita Reut sits in Russian custody, accused of planting a bomb that killed a naval captain in Sebastopol on August 13. The victim was Robert Shagueyev, a Ukrainian naval officer who defected to Russia in 2014 and handed over Ukraine's only submarine, the Zaporiyia, to Moscow. Security forces caught Reut as she prepared to flee to Sochi, where she had already purchased plane tickets for travel abroad.

The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, claims Reut confessed to the bombing without expressing remorse. Moscow alleges that Ukraine's intelligence service recruited and paid her in cryptocurrency to carry out the attack. Kiev has not confirmed involvement in the killing of a military commander it had pursued for years. The details surrounding Reut's background come largely from pro-Russian sources and accounts affiliated with Russian intelligence, which have also circulated information linking her to escort services and adult content websites—claims that warrant caution given the source material's known tendency to blend fact with disinformation.

Reut is a biologist who worked in a laboratory. According to the FSB, she was born in Yaroslavl and lived for a time in Sochi, where she opened a travel agency in 2023 that closed within six weeks. She also worked in advertising. She was active on social media and traveled frequently to Russian-occupied Crimea and abroad, particularly to Turkey and Egypt. In 2025, she was fined and detained for two days after loudly declaring on a train from Samara that Russians deserved the bombing Ukraine had just carried out in Rostov. She had also posted criticism of the war and official Russian policy online.

The bombing itself followed a pattern. According to FSB-linked Telegram channels, Reut placed a powerful explosive device in a garbage container on a central avenue in Sebastopol. Shagueyev was descending nearby stairs with a friend when the bomb detonated, killing him instantly and wounding his companion. Residents heard the blast and initially believed Ukraine had launched a drone strike. Shagueyev had been under Ukrainian intelligence surveillance since his 2014 defection, and in 2022 was suspected of high treason. The submarine he allegedly delivered to Russia, the Zaporiyia, was the only one Ukraine possessed at the time. Renamed B-435 by the Russians, the 1970s-era vessel was used between 2022 and 2024 to fight its former owners during the invasion before being permanently moored to eventually become a museum.

The case echoes another bombing six weeks earlier in Monaco, on June 29, targeting Vadim Ermolaev, a wealthy businessman who fled to the French coast when Russia invaded and whom Ukraine has repeatedly accused of profiting from business dealings with Russians in Crimea. That attack, also triggered by remote control, wounded Ermolaev, his wife, and his son as they returned from dinner. A 39-year-old woman named Anastasia Beresovska carried out that bombing in exchange for cryptocurrency payment. She escaped to Germany but her freedom lasted only three days. Her body, shot twice in the head, was found buried in a forest outside Kiev. Two individuals linked to Ukrainian police and intelligence were arrested, though they claimed to have acted independently. One of them had a torture chamber beneath his house, recently used.

The Reut case remains in Russian hands, with only the FSB's account available for verification. No independent confirmation exists of her confession or the circumstances surrounding her arrest. What is clear is that Shagueyev, the man who handed Russia its only submarine prize in 2014, is dead—and the methods used to kill him suggest a pattern of targeted operations that blur the line between military action and assassination.