Russian agents plotted to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and top Ukrainian military officials as a “gift” to Vladimir Putin as he’s sworn in for a fifth term—but Ukrainian security officials caught wind of the plan and thwarted the operation.
That’s according to the Security Service of Ukraine, which said Tuesday that two colonels in the State Security Administration were detained after it was discovered they’d been taking orders from Moscow. The two colonels, who have not been identified, were “leaking secret information to Moscow” as Russia’s Federal Security Service developed plans to take out Zelensky, the SBU said in a statement.
The pair was reportedly part of a network of moles operating in Ukraine that was acting on behalf of the FSB. Among other things, the group was tasked with finding someone in Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and then kill him, according to the SBU.
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Another plan involved one of Russia’s sleeper agents passing on information about Zelensky’s movements to Moscow, which would then launch a missile strike targeting the area where he is located before sending in a drone to kill off any survivors. One of the detained colonels was reportedly in charge of securing the equipment for this planned assassination.
Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, was also a target, with Russian agents having set a deadline to kill him for before Easter. Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the SBU, said “the attack that was supposed to be an inauguration gift for Putin was instead a failure by the Russian security services.”
