The Ukrainians claim that they foiled the planned assassination of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Civilian counterintelligence (SBU) accused a group of agents of the Russian secret service FSB of planning it on Tuesday. She detained five people.
Among those detained are two colonels of the State Security Service (SSA), which reports to the Ukrainian president and is responsible, among other things, for the protection of constitutional officials and the most important offices in the country.
“They were found guilty of high treason, aiding and abetting a terrorist attack,” the SBU wrote in a statement. Neither the Ukrainian media nor the SBU published the identities of the detainees.
“One of the tasks of the FSB intelligence network was to find a perpetrator within the army close to the presidential security circle who could take the head of state hostage and then kill him,” the Ukrainska Pravda server quotes from the SBU statement.
According to counterintelligence, the Russians also planned to “eliminate” the head of the SSA, Vasyl Malyuk, the director of military intelligence, Kyryl Budanov, and other high-ranking officials.
According to Ukrainian investigators, the suspects passed information to the Russian side and also prepared the means to carry out a terrorist attack. One of them got two drones and ammunition for them. He was said to have given them to his companions to use. Counterintelligence proved it with several pictures from the investigation.
Ukrainska pravda writes that FSB agents chose a private house in the Kyiv region to carry out the plan. But it is said that their intention was discovered in time by the security forces.
News of the alleged Russian plan to kill Zelensky came already at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the aggressor was trying to conquer Kyiv. At the time, there was speculation that mercenaries from Wagner’s group had received the order to assassinate the president (more here).
