Ukraine says it has captured two Ukrainian officers who were part of a spy network that planned the assassinations.
Sakari Nuuttila,
Tomi Pyy
Security Service of Ukraine SBU tells that he exposed the network of spies of the Russian security service FSB, which prepared the president to Volodoymyr Zelensky and assassinations of other Ukrainian state leaders.
According to the SBU, the spy network, whose activities were monitored by the FSB from Moscow, included two colonels of the State Security Agency of Ukraine, who passed information to Russia. They have been caught.
The SBU says that one of the network’s tasks was to look for military personnel close to the president who could take Zelenskyi hostage and later kill him.
According to Ukraine, Russia has tried to assassinate Zelensky several times during the war of aggression. The president himself told the British of The Sun magazine in an interview last November that he has survived “five or six” assassination attempts.
Last month, Polish and Ukrainian prosecutors said one person had been arrested on suspicion of providing support for a Russian plot to assassinate Zelenskyi. Last August, the SBU reported that one woman had been arrested because she was suspected of plotting to kill Zelensky and trying to find out about the president’s movements outside the capital, Kyiv.
“Should have been a gift for Putin”
In addition to Zelensky, the recently revealed network planned to kill its leader, according to the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Maljukinthe country’s head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov as well as other high-ranking officials.
The heads of the security service and military intelligence and other high-ranking officials were to be killed in such a way that Russian spies close to them would have sent information about their whereabouts to Russia.
A rocket attack would then have been made on the location, after which the people still in the area would have been killed with a drone. Finally, a second rocket attack would have destroyed the evidence of the drone, the SBU describes the information that survived in its investigation.
– The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin before his inauguration, was indeed a failure of the Russian security service, says SBU director Maljuk.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin inaugurations that followed the show elections have been held in Russia today, Tuesday.
Sources: Reuters, AFP, STT