Two officers in Ukraine’s own state guard service have been arrested, suspected of carrying out the plan under Moscow’s leadership, reports the security service SBU.
They are said to have been recruited before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to a statement on Tuesday. The plan is said to have been to abduct Zelenskyj and then kill him.
– Our counterintelligence service and investigators from the SBU have averted plans to eliminate Ukraine’s president and members of the top leadership within politics and defense, writes the SBU on Telegram.
The SBU quotes Ukraine’s intelligence chief Vasyl Maljuk as saying that an attack was to be carried out before Russian President Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a fifth presidential term on Tuesday. The covert operation that exposed the network was led by Maljuk himself.
It is not new that Ukraine accuses Russia of assassination plans against Zelenskyi. In 2002, he stated that he had been the victim of at least ten attempted murders.
In April, Polish prosecutors also announced that a Polish man had been arrested on suspicion of spying on behalf of Russia in connection with an assassination plot against Zelenskyj.
Tags: Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyj Ukraines security service care agent networks
