Ukrainian officials announced on Tuesday that they thwarted a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other leading government and military officials.
Ukraine's main internal security agency, the SBU, said it uncovered the plot, involving a network of embedded agents and two Ukrainian colonels.
In a statement, the SBU accused the two colonels of working for Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, to identify people assigned to Zelensky's security detail who might be willing to take him hostage and kill him.
The SBC says it disrupted the plot right before Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a fifth term as Russia's president.
Other officials targeted in the plot include SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk and the head of Ukraine's military intelligence, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov.
Ukraine's claims have not been independently verified.
According to The New York Times, one of the Ukrainian colonels had amassed a small arsenal, including drones and anti-personnel mines, which would be provided to agents charged with carrying out the attack:
The services said the two colonels accused in the plot belonged to the State Security Administration, which protects top officials. They had been recruited before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the statement, which identified three F.S.B. members — Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Oleksiy Kornev — as running the operation from Moscow.
The assassination of General Budanov, the services said, was planned to take place before Orthodox Easter, which was celebrated on May 5. The F.S.B.'s network of agents in Ukraine was tasked with observing and passing on information about General Budanov's whereabouts, the Ukrainian security services said. Once his location had been confirmed and communicated, he would have been targeted in a rocket and drone attack.
Weapons for the attack were provided to one of the colonels, including attack drones, ammunition for a rocket launcher and anti-personnel mines, according to the security services and Ukraine's prosecutor general. The colonel was to pass the weapons to other agents to carry out the attack, the Ukrainian statement said.
General Budanov's wife was poisoned late last year, according to the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, in an incident that led to widespread speculation that Russia was stepping up efforts to target Ukraine's senior leadership.
Last month, the SBU made an announcement about the arrest of a Polish national. The person allegedly offered to spy on behalf of the Kremlin as part of an extended operation to assassinate Zelensky.
In a recent interview, Zelensky said that he had been the target of at least ten assassination plots.
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