MOSCOW - The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday it had thwarted a Ukrainian-British plan to hijack a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet equipped with the Kinzhal missile system.

The FSB press office said that the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and "its British handlers" attempted to recruit Russian pilots with an offer of $3 million to fly the MiG-31 to a NATO base in Constanta, Romania.

The airbase is NATO's largest one in southeastern Europe, where the aircraft could be shot down by air defense systems, although the pilots were promised citizenship of a Western country, it said.

ALSO READ: Eight detained for plot to sabotage communications facilities in Russia

"As a response to the provocation, on Nov 9-10 of this year, the Russian Aerospace Forces struck, using hypersonic 'Kinzhal' missiles, the main electronic intelligence center of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Defense Ministry in the city of Brovary, the Kiev region, and the Starokonstantinov airfield in the Khmelnytskyi region, where the so-called F-16s are deployed," the FSB said in a statement.

Dmitry Belik, a Russian State Duma deputy from Sevastopol and a member of the Committee on International Affairs, told the RIA Novosti news agency that Ukraine's hijack attempt is evidence of its intention to drag NATO into an open military conflict with Russia.