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Ukraine said it has foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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It said members of the Ukrainian security service were part of the plot.
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Russia appears to have gained astonishing access to Ukraine’s security services.
Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said on Tuesday it had foiled the latest Russian plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials.
This particular plot, however, seems to have been more disturbing. Among those allegedly involved in the planned killings were high-ranking members of the Ukrainian State Protection Service.
Mark Episkopos, a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote that the alleged plot exposed serious vulnerabilities in the Ukrainian government.
“It suggests a larger phenomenon of extensive Russian intelligence penetration into the Ukrainian bureaucracy and military, which will prove difficult to fully diagnose, let alone uproot,” he wrote, adding that Ukraine’s recent troubles on the battlefield could lead some to become traitors.
Since the early days of the Russian invasion, Russia has reportedly targeted Zelensky for assassination.
Last year, the Ukrainian president said he had known of so many plots against his life since the start of the war that he had lost count.
According to SBU, the men involved in the latest plot worked as part of a network of agents for Russia’s FSB security service. They were looking for potential traitors among Zelenskyy’s personal security team to take him hostage and kill him.
The plot is “the first time that such a high-ranking official of the state security service has become [the] the enemy’s moles,” SBU spokesman Artem Dehtiarenko told Politico.
The plan, according to the SBU, also included persuading a mole to pass on information about the location of top Ukrainian officials, including SBU head Vasyl Malyuk and Kyril Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence.
“They planned to launch a rocket attack at the coordinates of the house where the official was supposed to be. They then proceeded to attack the people remaining at the location with a drone. Afterwards, the Russians planned to use another missile to destroy the drone’s tracks,” the SBU said.
It is claimed that the conspirators planned to kill Budanov before Orthodox Easter (May 5) and that the mission would be “a gift to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s inauguration.”
It said one of the arrested suspects had purchased drones and anti-tank grenades for the mission.
The fifth inauguration of the Russian president took place on Tuesday.
The statement said that two Ukrainian officials had been arrested in connection with the plot and that the Russian FSB agents who handled the moles were Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Aleksii Kornev.
Read the original article on Business Insider
