Russian plot to kill Zelensky foiled: Kyiv
Ukraine said yesterday it had unravelled a Russian plot to assassinate senior Ukrainian political and military figures, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Two Ukrainian security officials were arrested for their links to the group, which had aimed to carry out high-profile killings ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's inauguration yesterday.
"The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin for his inauguration, was in fact a failure of the Russian secret service," Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said in a statement.
Kyiv says Zelensky has been targeted by Russia on multiple earlier occasions, including at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The SBU said it had exposed a network of agents set up by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) tasked with identifying individuals close to Zelensky's security detail who could take the Ukrainian leader hostage and kill him.
"The network, whose activities were supervised by the FSB from Moscow, included two colonels of the State Department of Protection who were leaking classified information to Russia," the SBU said.
Ukraine's State Department of Protection is in charge protecting the president and other senior officials and their families.
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