Ukraine Says It Foiled Russian Plot to Assassinate Zelensky

KYIV, Ukraine—The Ukrainian Security Service said it foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky by striking his convoy with missiles and drones, calling it the latest attempt by Moscow to eliminate the Ukrainian leader.

The agency, known as the SBU, said it had detained two senior officers in the country’s Department of State Security, which is responsible for protecting the president. The SBU said they were two of five agents working on the plot under the direction of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB. The agency said the group was also planning to kill SBU Chairman Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, and the country’s top military-intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov.

Malyuk said the plot was supposed to be a “gift” for Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of his Tuesday inauguration for another six-year term. A Kremlin spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The terrorist attack…was actually a failure of the Russian special services,” Malyuk said.

The alleged plot comes as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian forces are losing ground in the east as they desperately await fresh shipments of weaponry from the U.S. Russia’s army has seized several villages in recent weeks in the eastern Donetsk region and is mounting a frontal assault on the city of Chasiv Yar, which sits on a high point in the area.

The SBU said the plot would have involved a series of strikes on vehicles carrying Zelensky and the other targets. Once Russians received the coordinates, they would send a missile strike. Then, one of the men surveilling the targets would use an FPV drone to attack anyone left alive at the site of the explosion. Russians would send a second missile strike in a so-called double-tap attack to cover up the presence of the drone and ensure the assassination was fully executed.

The Ukrainian security agency published text messages, photos, an interview with one of the detained men and an intercepted phone call between him and what it called his FSB handler as evidence of the plot. In the call, the alleged FSB handler told the man he would receive at least $50,000 for the job.

The agency didn’t name the detained Ukrainian men. It said they were colonels in the Department of State Security.

The alleged plot is the latest in what Ukrainian officials have said are a string of attempts on the life of Zelensky, the former comic actor who has become the frontman at home and abroad for Ukraine’s war effort.

In an interview last year, Budanov said Ukrainian intelligence agencies had foiled several attempts on Zelensky’s life but didn’t say how many.

“Several times they seriously prepared certain operations: very seriously, carefully planned, they carried out preparatory measures,” he said at the time.

His remarks followed the detention of a Ukrainian woman who was allegedly spying on Zelensky’s location for Russia when he visited an area affected by the Kakhovka Dam explosion last summer.

Polish authorities arrested a man this spring, whom they named only as Pawel K, in what they called a Russian plot to attack the Ukrainian president. The authorities said the man was providing information to Moscow from Poland about an airport frequently used by both U.S. and Ukrainian military and politicians, including Zelensky and President Biden.