Ukraine’s state security service said it foiled a Russian plot to kill the president Volodimir Zelensky and other senior officials.
Investigators have closed 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 post by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Telegram.
“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin at the inauguration, was in fact a failure of the Russian special services,” SBU head Vasyl Maliuk said in a statement. according to Reuters.
The colonels were accused of treason.
The two men were chasing a member of Zelensky’s guard who would capture and eventually assassinate the Ukrainian president, according to the SBU. Both colonels were recruited before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, according to The Associated Press.
Threats to kill Zelensky have been emerging since the start of the war. He said that in 2021 there were at least 10 attempts to kill him, the AP noted.
Last August, the Ukrainian Secret Service stated that detained a Ukrainian woman who worked as a Russian informant as part of an assassination plot.
Ukrainian authorities foiled an alleged murder in the early days of the planned invasion by some of Chechnya’s elite special forces.
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