An 18-year-old New Jersey man allegedly en route to join a paramilitary force in Ukraine was arrested at an airport after sharing with an undercover law enforcement operative a plan to destroy an electrical substation as part of his white supremacist ideology, according to federal prosecutors. Andrew Takhistov instructed the officer to destroy a New Jersey energy facility with Molotov cocktails while he was overseas, detailing how to evade surveillance cameras and use discreet parking locations, USA Today reports. He spent months discussing steps to achieve "white domination" and encouraged violence against ethnic and religious minorities. Takhistov was allegedly planning to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, a Russian militia fighting for Ukraine. “Imagine the chaos and number of life-threatening emergencies if a large population of people in New Jersey lost power in the middle of the current heat wave,” said FBI agent James Dennehy.
The foiled plot in New Jersey is the latest to sweep the nation amid concerns about attacks on U.S. power grids. Several states, including Florida, Oregon and the Carolinas have faced targets on electric infrastructure in recent years. In May, a Maryland woman pleaded guilty to plotting to destroy the Baltimore power grid as part of a white supremacist ideology that promotes government collapse. In the New Jersey case, court documents detail months of messages Takhistov sent glorifying past violence against racial and religious minorities. He praised the murder of George Floyd because it got "more white people to wake up." He also glorified mass shooters, including those that attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The first messages were sent around January 2023, when Takhistov asked others on the platform about how to configure his body armor vests to hold the largest amount of ammunition, and later shared manuals on constructing homemade firearms. . Takhistov was arrested Wednesday at Newark Liberty International Airport as he was planning to travel Ukraine via Paris.