‘A gift for Putin’: arrests for plot to assassinate Zelensky and top Ukrainian officials

Ukrainian authorities said they arrested two officials from the agency responsible for protecting top government leaders and accused them of developing a plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials as a “gift” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. for his inauguration.

The two suspects were colonels in Ukraine’s State Protection Department, roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service, and were recruited by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, according to Ukraine’s State Security Service.

The State Security Service, known as SBU, announced the arrests in a post on the social media platform Telegram. The statement did not identify the suspects, and their faces were obscured in photographs showing the arrests and in a subsequent video of an interrogation.

The colonels were tasked with providing the FSB with information about the whereabouts of Zelensky and other senior officials and recruiting other people who could directly assist in the assassinations, the SBU said.