Ukraine detains agents working for Russia who planned to assassinate Zelensky | Russia

The State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said it had detained two Russian agents, within the Ukrainian state guard service, who were planning the assassination of President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to Reuters, the plan would also include the assassination of other senior Ukrainian officials.

“SBU counterintelligence and investigators thwarted the plans of the FSB (Russia’s security service) to eliminate the President of Ukraine and other representatives of the top military and political leadership,” the SBU said on its Telegram channel this Tuesday -fair.

The two men who intended to commit the crime as a “gift” for Vladimir Putin were colonels from the Ukrainian National Guard, recruited by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to disclose confidential information to Moscow, the SBU added via the same channel.

The mission would involve finding someone close to the presidential guard who would take Zelensky hostage so that he could later kill him, according to the same SBU statement, without clarifying when the alleged conspiracy was stopped.

“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin for his inauguration, was, in fact, a failure of the Russian special services,” said the head of the SBU, Vasyl Maliuk, quoted by his agency on Telegram. The spy group also allegedly planned to kill Maliuk and Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the military intelligence agency.

Budanov’s murder was planned for before Orthodox Easter Sunday, May 5th. The agents attempted to inform the Russian side of Budanov’s whereabouts so they could carry out missile strikes and drones on site. One of the detained men was, according to Reuters, involved in the transport and storage of drones and explosives for the operation.

Moscow has not yet commented on what happened. The same happened last month, when the Kremlin refused to comment on the arrest in Poland of a man accused of collaborating with the Russian secret services in the preparation of another assassination attempt on the Ukrainian President.

Although Vladimir Putin claims he has no intention of assassinating Zelensky, as he said in an interview with an Israeli television program, the President of Ukraine claims that, since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has already tried to kill him 10 times.