Ex-shop assistant detained over plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
By David L. Stern and Siobhán O'Grady
Kyiv: Ukrainian security officials say they have arrested a Ukrainian woman on suspicion of aiding Russia’s intelligence services, including involvement in an assassination attempt on President Volodymyr Zelensky last month.
“The security service detained an informant of the special services of the Russian Federation, who, on the eve of the recent working trip of the president of Ukraine to the Mykolaiv region, was gathering intelligence about the planned visit,” Ukraine’s State Security Service, the SBU, said in a statement posted on its website on Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (centre right) inspects damage of the Odesa Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa in July.Credit: AP
“The perpetrator tried to establish the time and list of locations of the approximate route of the head of state,” it said.
Zelensky has made semiregular, unannounced visits to formerly occupied territories or areas near the front line – visits that require extreme caution due to the possibility of targeted Russian attacks. He visited the southern Ukrainian regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv at the end of July.
The statement said the suspected Russian informant was “a former saleswoman in a military store on the territory of one of the military units” in the town of Ochakiv, which Zelensky visited.
A Ukrainian government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said that the woman was detained on August 1. Her identity has not been revealed.
The government official said Ukrainian security services prevented the woman from collecting information about Zelensky’s visit and foiled the assassination plot.
The SBU “took comprehensive measures to keep her from the visit, and she did not have any information about where [Zelensky] would go, how he would get there,” the official said, without going into further detail.
“And on the day of the visit she [was] also restricted in her movements.”
After Zelensky’s visit, the security services continued to follow the woman. The SBU said that Russian intelligence services then tasked her with identifying “the location of electronic warfare systems and warehouses with ammunition of the armed forces of Ukraine in the Ochakiv region”, which would be used “to prepare a new massive airstrike on the Mykolaiv region,”
“To gather intelligence, she travelled around the territory of the district and photographed the locations of Ukrainian objects,” it said.
If found guilty, the woman could face 12 years in prison, the SBU said.
The announcement of the arrest came a day after officials from dozens of countries wrapped up talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, aimed at discussing a peace plan in Ukraine. On Sunday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said the meeting was “very productive” despite varying points of view.
Russia was not invited to the talks, and they were dismissed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as “doomed to failure”. Attendees included an envoy from China, which had not attended prior talks in Denmark.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that Beijing would maintain an “independent and impartial” stance on the Ukraine war while maintaining “close strategic coordination” with Russia in international affairs, according to a readout from the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday.
Meanwhile, attacks continued across Ukraine, including two separate strikes on Monday on a residential building in the eastern city of Pokrovsk. At least four civilians and a state emergency service official were killed and more than a dozen people were injured, according to Ukraine’s interior ministry.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said that an air defence system had downed a Ukrainian drone near the city on Monday.
Drone strikes on Russian targets have increased in recent weeks. On Friday, Ukraine used sea drones to attack a Russian naval base, a Ukrainian government official said; the next day, a sea drone hit a Russian oil tanker near occupied Crimea. After an attack on Moscow last week, Zelensky called the war “returning” to Russia “an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”
Yermak, the presidential adviser, said on Monday that Russia had returned 22 soldiers to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange. Such swaps have occurred throughout the war. Photos showed the men dressed in military uniforms and draped in Ukrainian flags.
The Washington Post
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.