Ukraine says it’s foiled assassination plot against Zelensky

Tim Lister, Olga Voitovych and Christian Edwards, CNN

An alleged informant for Russia has been detained in connection to a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said Monday.

The detained woman has not been named publicly but is from the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv, according to a statement from the SBU.

The SBU said she had been “gathering intelligence” about Zelensky’s planned visit to Mykolaiv at the end of July, in order to plan a Russian airstrike to kill the president.

However, SBU agents had obtained information about the “subversive activities of the suspect” and adopted additional security measures, foiling the plot.

The SBU said that it caught the woman “red-handed” as she “was trying to pass intelligence to the invaders.”

In monitoring the communications of the woman, the SBU established that she also had the task of identifying the location of electronic warfare systems and warehouses with ammunition of the armed forces.

She allegedly traveled around the territory of the district and filmed the locations of Ukrainian objects.

According to the investigation, the perpetrator was a resident of Ochakov in Mykolaiv region and a former saleswoman in a military store.

‘Automatics for everyone’

Zelensky has faced several known attempts on his life since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of his country in February 2022. Russian special forces were tasked with eliminating the Ukrainian president at the start of the war.

In a profile published in April 2022, TIME magazine described how Russian troops had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture Zelensky and his family on February 24, the day after the war began.

As Ukrainian forces fought Russians on the streets of Kyiv, the presidential guard tried to seal the compound using police barricades and piles of plywood, TIME reported.

Read more: cnn.com

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