MOSCOW (AFP) — Russia on Friday said it had thwarted an alleged bomb plot against officials from its telecoms regulator as discontent grows in the country over restrictions on online activity and internet access.

Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor has enjoyed growing powers as for months it throttles the country’s two largest messengers — Telegram and WhatsApp — in an attempt to push users to use a new state-backed service, called Max.

Russia has also curbed the use of VPNs and imposed rolling internet outages — affecting Moscow, other major cities and areas close to the border with Ukraine.

It has justified the blackouts as a necessary security measure against Ukrainian retaliatory drone strikes and the restrictions on messengers as a way to combat criminal activity that it says originate from Kyiv.

The FSB security agency said Friday that a “terrorist attack against Roskomnadzor’s leadership, planned to involve a car bombing with an explosive device, was prevented.”

It said during raids carried out last week, “seven supporters of far-right and neo-fascist ideology, recruited by Ukrainian special services via the Telegram messenger, were detained.”

“The leader of the terrorist group, a Moscow resident born in 2004, put up armed resistance during his arrest, using a firearm, and was neutralized,” FSB said.

In a video released by FSB, its officers are seen swooping on flats and unnamed young people with their faces blurred admitting to alleged participation in the plot.

The FSB said criminal cases have been opened into illegal trafficking of weapons and explosive devices, and that it was mulling charges of terrorism, which carry a possible life sentence.

Drone strike

Meanwhile, a married couple in their seventies were killed in their home in the early hours of Friday by a Russian drone barrage on the Ukrainian coastal city of Odesa.

Several apartment buildings in the city were struck, with emergency services posting photos of one building almost ripped in two by the barrage.

A firefighter was seen climbing up a ladder into the side of the cratered structure to look for survivors.

“A married couple were killed in the overnight attack, both were 75 years old,” the head of the city military administration Sergiy Lysak wrote on social media.

The Black Sea city, a key export hub on Ukraine’s south coast, has been heavily targeted throughout Russia’s four-year invasion.

Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and millions displayed in what has become the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

Russian drone attacks on the frontline region of Kherson also killed another two people -- a 68-year-old man and a woman whose identity was still being established -- local officials there said.