Ukraine arrests two senior military officers for murder plot against Zelensky

NOS News•today, 3:56 PM

The Ukrainian secret service says it has arrested two soldiers who were allegedly involved in a Russian plan to kill President Zelensky and other high-ranking government officials.

According to the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU, these are two colonels from the Ukrainian State Security Agency. They were part of a network of agents, controlled by the Russian secret service FSB. The colonels leaked confidential information to Russia, the Ukrainian agency says.

According to the SBU, the network was looking for soldiers “close to Zelensky’s security” who could “take the president hostage and later kill him.”

In addition to Zelensky, the heads of the SBU and the GUR military intelligence service were also targeted by the network, the Ukrainian security service report said. The plan was to report their movements to Russia, after which they would be attacked with multiple missiles and drones.

The Ukrainian Public Broadcaster reports that one of the arrested colonels personally brought explosives to Kyiv before the attacks. The SBU allegedly followed him and listened in on conversations. The suspects risk life imprisonment.

According to Ukraine, Zelensky has been the target of a planned assassination attempt several times since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.

Last month, Poland and Ukraine reported that they had arrested a man for involvement in a plot to kill Zelensky. In August last year, the SBU said a woman had been arrested for the same offence. She is said to have tried to gather information about the Ukrainian leader’s movements outside Kyiv.