Ukraine has arrested two high-ranking security officers after uncovering an alleged Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several other top officials, Ukraine’s security service has said.
Ukrainian counterintelligence uncovered a network of spies managed by Russia’s FSB, to whom two Ukrainian colonels are accused of leaking information regarding the whereabouts of senior government personnel, according to a May 7 statement from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
The network planned to assassinate Mr. Zelenskyy and intelligence chiefs Vasyl Malyuk and Kyryll Budanov, who head the Security Service of Ukraine and the Main Directorate of Intelligence respectively.
The spy network was tasked with identifying and turning members of Mr. Zelenskyy’s closest entourage who would be able to kidnap and kill him.
An attack on Mr. Budanev had also been planned to take place prior to the Orthodox celebration of Easter on May 5.
One plot included following highly-guarded officials who were under guard and launching a rocket attack on their location, according to the statement.
After the initial attack, the Russian assets intended to kill survivors with drones before destroying the evidence by calling in a Russian missile attack.
The SBU said that it recovered weapons that had been purchased for the attacks by a colonel in Ukraine’s state guard, a law enforcement agency under the control of the Ukrainian parliament.
The armament included drones, rocket-propelled grenades, and anti-personnel mines.
The colonel was allegedly tracked by counterintelligence to another region of Ukraine, where he purchased the weapons for the attack, and his conversations were recorded alongside those of the would-be attacker and their handler in Moscow.
Mr. Malyuk, who was targeted in the ploy, said that the SBU identified three members of Russia’s security service, the FSB, as being responsible for the plot: Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin, and Oleksiy Kornev.
“The terrorist attack, which was supposed to be a gift to Putin before [his] inauguration, was actually a failure of the Russian special services,” Mr. Malyuk said in a statement.
“We will continue to work ahead of time so that every traitor receives the well-deserved court sentences.”
Though the existence of the plot and spy network were just made public, the SBU said that it had been tracing the activities of the group for several years and that the FSB’s Dmytro Perlin had begun to recruit moles in Ukraine in January of 2022, a month before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Mr. Perlin’s colleague, Oleksiy Kornev, is then alleged to have provided for the newly-turned spies, and of organizing several meetings with one of the Ukrainian colonels in nations on the border with Ukraine.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on May 7 that the incident underscored the brutality of Russia’s war effort and Russian President Vladimir Putin more broadly.
“Obviously it just speaks to the depravity that we’ve seen on display from the Putin regime since the outset of this conflict,” Mr. Miller said.
The two colonels have been accused of treason under martial law and preparing a terror attack. It is believed the Russian handlers are at large in Russia.
