Ukraine says it foiled Russian plot to kill Zelensky

Ukraine’s state security service said it foiled a Russian plot to kill President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials.

Investigators shut down the planned assassination by two colonels who served in Ukraine’s government protection unit and were reportedly recruited by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), according to a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) post on Telegram.

“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin for the inauguration, was indeed a failure of the Russian special services,” SBU head Vasyl Maliuk said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The colonels were charged with treason.

The two men were in pursuit of a person in Zelensky’s guard who would take and eventually assassinate the Ukrainian president, according to the SBU. Both of the colonels were recruited before the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to The Associated Press.

Threats to kill Zelensky have been coming since the start of the war. He said that in 2022 there were at least 10 attempts to kill him, AP noted.

Last August, the Secret Service of Ukraine said it detained a Ukrainian woman who was working as a Russian informant as part of an assassination plot.

Ukrainian authorities thwarted an alleged assassination in the early days of the invasion plotted by some elite Chechen special forces.

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