Two double agents were tasked with finding someone close to the presidential guard who would take Zelenskyy hostage and later kill him, the SBU statement says.
Ukraine's state security service announced it apprehended two Russian agents plotting the assassination of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials as "a gift" for Vladimir Putin, coinciding with Putin's swearing-in for a new term in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
The two men, who were colonels in Ukraine's state guard service, had been recruited by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and were providing classified information to Moscow, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), as reported on Telegram.
They were instructed to recruit someone close to the presidential guard to capture and eventually kill Zelenskyy, the SBU statement revealed, though it did not specify when the alleged plot was disrupted.
"The terrorist attack, which was intended as a gift for Putin's inauguration, ended up being a significant failure for the Russian special services," SBU chief Vasyl Maliuk was quoted as saying on Telegram.
There was no immediate response from Moscow regarding the alleged plot. The Kremlin also declined to comment when asked about the recent arrest in Poland of a man accused of collaborating with Russian intelligence to plan a possible assassination attempt on Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been leading the country's resistance against Russia's invasion for over two years, stated last autumn that his security services had thwarted at least five Russian plots to assassinate him.
In addition to targeting Zelenskyy, the spy group also planned to "eliminate" Vasyl Maliuk, the head of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU), and Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of the military intelligence agency, according to the SBU.
The SBU disclosed that Budanov's assassination was intended to occur before Orthodox Easter Sunday on May 5. The agents aimed to share Budanov's location with Russian forces to enable missile and drone attacks on the site, the agency explained.
Furthermore, one of the arrested suspects was reportedly involved in transporting and storing drones and explosives for the assassination plot.
