Russian plot to kill Volodymyr Zelensky as ‘gift’ to Vladimir Putin foiled by security services

Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has foiled another assassination attempt on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The SBU said it had arrested two colonels in the state guard of Ukraine who had reportedly been recruited before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia’s security services, the FSB, to kill Mr Zelensky.

The state guard is usually charged with protecting the country’s top officials.

The colonels were arrested on suspicion of enacting a plan drawn up by the FSB, according to a statement by the SBU. Its head, Vasyl Malyuk said the assassination was supposed to be a “gift” from the FSB to Putin before his inauguration yesterday following a sham election.

But it is not the first time the ­Kremlin has tried to assassinate Mr Zelensky. It is likely not to be the last, either.

In an interview last year, Mr Zelensky said he was aware of at least “five or six” attempts on his life, though aides claimed in March that the Ukrainian leader had been targeted dozens of times. They said he had survived three attempts in one week.

It has also been claimed that more than 400 mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group were reported to have been in Kyiv in February 2022, when ­Putin launched his invasion, with ­orders to kill Mr Zelensky as part of a “decapitation strategy”.

Before the foiled attempt reported yesterday, the last failed assassination plot was publicised by the SBU in April.

Together with Polish law enforcement officers, the SBU exposed a Russian agent who was planning to collect and transfer information about the security of Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport in Poland, from where Mr Zelensky flies during international trips.

In a statement on April 18, the SBU said: “SBU employees and Ukrainian prosecutors informed their Polish colleagues about a possible assassination attempt and handed them key evidence in this case. Thanks to successful actions and prompt exchange of information between the countries, it was possible to identify and detain a recruited agent of the Russian special services on the territory of Poland.”

In August last year, the SBU detained another informant who was gathering details of Mr Zelensky’s planned trip to Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine.

The SBU said they caught the female suspect “red-handed” preparing to hand over details of the trip so that Russia could carry out an airstrike against the Ukrainian president. The SBU said the suspect was a salesperson in a military store in nearby city of Ochakov. She faces up to 12 years in prison.

On the first day of the war, February 24, 2022, Russian special forces parachuted into Kyiv. At that time, Ukraine’s western allies were urging Mr Zelensky to leave the capital.

But the Ukrainian leader stayed in Kyiv. Mr Zelensky’s bodyguards sealed off his office with makeshift barricades and bits of plywood, and his decision to stay came to typify Ukrainian resistance to Russia.

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