Ukraine on Tuesday said it had unraveled a Russian plot to assassinate senior Ukrainian political and military figures, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Two Ukrainian security officials were arrested for their links to the group, which had aimed to carry out high-profile killings ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday.
“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin for his inauguration, was in fact a failure of the Russian secret service,” Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Maliuk said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
Kyiv said Zelenskiy has been targeted by Russia on multiple earlier occasions, including at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The SBU said it had exposed a network of agents set up by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) tasked with identifying individuals close to Zelenskiy’s security detail who could take the Ukrainian leader hostage and kill him.
“The network, whose activities were supervised by the FSB from Moscow, included two colonels of the [Ukrainian] State Department of Protection who were leaking classified information to Russia,” the SBU said.
The department is in charge protecting the president and other senior officials and their families.
A source in Ukrainian law enforcement said that the suspects were detained “a few days ago.”
“They were really highly placed men. One of them was a head of department,” the source said.
The SBU published photographs of masked operatives in camouflage uniform arresting several suspects at night.
In a video posted on the SBU’s Web site, a man with his face blurred said his task was to “test the mood” among the presidential office’s security guards, and select someone ready to detain the president, possibly as he went to give his nightly broadcast.
Russia also planned to eliminate Maliuk, as well as Defence Intelligence of Ukraine Chief Kyrylo Budanov and other officials, the SBU said.
Budanov was due to be assassinated before Orthodox Easter, which was last weekend, the SBU said.
The assassin had been promised a reward of up to US$80,000, SBU spokesman Artem Dekhtyarenko said.
The SBU published video footage purportedly of an FSB handler telling an agent to surveil a house linked to a target, apparently Budanov, and text when he arrived.
“You’ll most likely hear a loud blast,” the man says, telling the agent to then use a drone to carry out a secondary strike.
The SBU published what it said were telephone messages between an FSB handler and a colonel in the State Department of Protection, who it said personally brought drones, rounds and anti-personnel mines to Kyiv.
It also gave names of three men it said were FSB handlers working with Ukrainian moles.
Those detained are suspected of treason and preparing a “terrorist act,” punishable by life in prison.
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