Ukraine says it has foiled Russia plot to overthrow Zelensky

Ukraine’s SBU security forces claimed to have foiled a Russia-backed coup yesterday which had planned to overthrow Volodymyr Zelensky and install a pro-Kremlin government.

They said that the plotters planned to use the cover of a rally in central Kyiv to incite riots and then capture the Ukrainian parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada.

“The perpetrators planned to announce the ‘removal from power’ of the current military-political leadership of Ukraine. They then hoped to seize the building of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada and block its work,” said the SBU, adding that the coup was planned for Ukraine’s Constitution Day on June 30.

It published photos of officers wearing balaclavas as they arrested several alleged plotters the day before. It also said that the focus of its operations had been in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of west Ukraine.

The coup plotters were known pro-Russia agitators and had stashed caches of weapons, which included assault rifles, a sniper rifle and handguns. Cartons of ammunition, laptops, mobile phones and hand-drawn coup instructions were also found in the raids.

“The perpetrators planned to disseminate information about the ‘unrest’ in Kyiv through domestic and foreign information resources,” said the SBU. “They hoped to destabilise the socio-political situation within our country, which would play out in favour of the Russian Federation.”

The SBU said that the coup plot had been organised by a “co-founder of a public organisation that has been known for its anti-Ukrainian actions since 2015” but it declined to name him directly.

The Kremlin has not commented but Western intelligence services have previously said that dozens of assassination attempts against Mr Zelensky have been foiled. In May, the SBU arrested two Ukrainian colonels working in the military unit tasked with protecting top officials for plotting to kill Mr Zelensky. They had planned to kidnap the Ukrainian president and then execute him.

Sunday’s alleged coup plot appears to have been bigger in scope, though, than the May assassination plan. The SBU said that as well as mobilising in Kyiv, the coup plotters had grassroots organisations in Dnipro and other Ukrainian cities.

“They communicated with each other in various instant messengers and, if they met, they did so in small groups of three,” said the SBU.

It also released, as evidence of the plot, an alleged voice recording of a conversation between two coup leaders. In the recording, one of the coup leaders claims to have the support of “not hundreds, but thousands” of people.

“We are officially going to organise ourselves as a Veche,” the leader said, using the word for a council or assembly in medieval Slavic city states. “We need to gather as many people as possible.”

The SBU said that if the alleged plotters are convicted, they could be sentenced to prison for up to 10 years.

Ukrainian intelligence services have warned this year that the Kremlin has stepped up its plots against the Ukrainian government as well as schemes to destabilise Ukraine.

Western governments have also warned that Kremlin agents have become more active in Europe.

Ukrainian convicts have been offered the chance to fight for their freedom as Kyiv looks to offset a manpower deficit by recruiting directly from its prisons – a tactic originally employed by the Wagner Group, and later by the Kremlin, against Ukrainian forces.

Around 27,000 prisoners are eligible for the new recruitment programme, while more than 3,000 have already been released on parole and assigned to military units, according to the justice ministry.

Russian forces have used more than 800 glide bombs in the past week to hit Ukraine, Mr Zelensky said last night. He shared photos of the Russian strikes on the besieged country’s cities of Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Odesa, Sumy, Kherson, Donetsk and Kharkiv.

“This week alone, Russia has used more than 800 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine. Against our cities and communities, against our people, against everything that makes life normal,” he said on X.

He said this after Russia struck Ukraine’s two largest cities yesterday, with missile fragments falling on a suburban Kyiv apartment building and a guided bomb killing one person in Kharkiv. An eight-month-old infant was injured in the bombing in Kharkiv, officials said.

The president renewed his call for more long-range weapons after seven people were killed in a Russian strike on the town of Vilniansk, near the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, which also injured 31 others.

“Our cities and communities suffer daily from such Russian strikes,” Mr Zelensky said after the attack which left two children dead.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin has refused to comment on Donald Trump’s claim he would “settle the war” in Ukraine if he was re-elected in November.

Trump made the claim during Thursday’s US presidential debate, where he and president Joe Biden competed to appear tougher on foreign policy.

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