AP
- Ukraine said it foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
- It said members of Ukraine's security service were part of the plot.
- Russia appears to have gained astonishing access to Ukraine's security service.
Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said on Tuesday that it had foiled the latest Russian plot to assassinate Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials.
This particular plot, however, appears to have been more troubling. Among those allegedly involved in the planned assassinations were senior members of Ukraine's government protection service.
Mark Episkopos, a Eurasia Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote that the alleged plot exposed serious vulnerabilities in Ukraine's government.
"It suggests a larger phenomenon of extensive Russian intelligence penetration in the Ukrainian bureaucracy and military that will prove difficult to fully diagnose, let alone uproot," he wrote, adding that Ukraine's recent problems on the battlefield could lead some to become traitors.
Since the earliest days of the Russian invasion, Russia has reportedly targeted Zelenskyy for assassination.
Last year, the Ukrainian president said he was aware of so many plots against his life since the start of the war he'd lost count.
According to SBU, the men involved in the latest plot were working as part of a network of agents for the Russian FSB security service. They had been searching for would-be traitors among Zelenskyy's personal security team to take him hostage and kill him.
The plot is "the first time such a high-ranking official of the state security department has become [the] enemy's moles," Artem Dehtiarenko, SBU spokesman, told Politico.
The plan, according to the SBU, also involved persuading a mole to pass information on about the location of top Ukrainian officials, including SBU head, Vasyl Malyuk and Kyril Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence.
"At the coordinates of the house where the official was supposed to be, they planned to launch a missile strike. Then, they were going to attack the people who remained at the location with a drone. After that, the Russians planned to hit with another missile in order to destroy the traces of the drone," said the SBU.
It's alleged that the plotters had planned to kill Budanov by Orthodox Easter (May 5) and the mission was "supposed to be a gift to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's inauguration."
It said one of the suspects arrested had bought drones and anti-tank grenades for the mission.
The Russian president's fifth inauguration was held on Tuesday.
The statement said two Ukrainian officials had been arrested in connection with the plot and identified the Russian FSB agents who handled the moles as Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin, and Aleksii Kornev.