Two colonels from Ukraine’s State Guard Department (UDO), whose duty was to protect the country’s top officials, were working for Russia’s FSB and plotting to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in a conversation with journalists.
“Last year, we carried out a major operation. One of those detained was the head of a department within UDO — someone whose role is to protect this country’s leadership. Alongside him, another colonel was arrested. Both were working for Russia’s FSB, specifically its Fifth Service,” Malyuk said.
According to the SBU chief, the plan was to identify and recruit individuals to assassinate Zelensky at the President’s Office in Kyiv.
“This was an extremely complex operation on our part. We worked on it for nearly two years, essentially from the beginning of the full-scale invasion. We managed to infiltrate the group using a powerful agent-technical operation,” Malyuk said.
He also recalled another attempted assassination, this time in Poland. According to Malyuk, it involved a retired Polish military officer who had been recruited decades ago by the Soviet Union and was recently reactivated as a “sleeper agent” to eliminate Zelensky during his stay at Rzeszów Airport.
“The task was to physically eliminate President Zelensky at Rzeszów Airport. Several options were considered, including an FPV drone and a sniper rifle,” he said.
Maliuk added that Russian intelligence services had also been gathering and transmitting information, and were preparing assassination attempts against the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, as well as against Malyuk himself.
Earlier, the SBU officially reported the arrest of the two UDO colonels, who were part of a spy network run by the FSB’s Fifth Service and were plotting to kill the president.
