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Ukrainian authorities said Tuesday that they have arrested two officers in the agency responsible for protecting senior 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 the SBU, announced the arrests in a post on the Telegram social media platform. The statement did not identify the suspects, and their faces were obscured in photos showing the arrests and in a subsequent video of an interrogation.

The colonels were tasked with providing the FSB with information about Zelensky and other top officials’ whereabouts and to recruit others who could directly help in the assassinations, the SBU said. 

“One of the tasks of the FSB intelligence network was to search for operatives among the military close to the protection of the president, who could take the head of state hostage and later kill him,” the SBU wrote.

In addition to targeting Zelensky, the FSB also hoped to kill the head of the SBU, Vasyl Maliuk, and Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the SBU said. Budanov was intended to “be eliminated” before Orthodox Easter, which was Sunday, the SBU said.

The attack on Budanov “was supposed to be a gift to Putin before the inauguration,” Maliuk said in the SBU statement. He called the operation “actually a failure of the Russian special services.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/07/vladimir-putin-inauguration-russia-war/" target=_blank>Putin was sworn in Tuesday for a fifth term as president</a> in an elaborate ceremony at the Kremlin.

To kill Budanov, the colonels intended to recruit an “agent” from his security detail, who would pass on the coordinates of his location to the FSB, the SBU said.

“A rocket attack was planned,” the SBU said. After this initial attack, the recruited agent was supposed to kill those who were still alive with a drone attack. “After that, the Russians planned to target [the location] with another missile … to destroy traces of the use of the drone,” the SBU said.

The two colonels were charged with treason, the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office said in a Telegram post Tuesday. One of the colonels also was charged with “aiding in the preparation of a terrorist act.”

Both men started working with the FSB before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the SBU said.

In the video, one of the Ukrainian colonels said that, in preparation for the attacks, he received weapons, which included an anti-personnel mine and drones with explosives, which he left at an agreed-upon location on the side of the highway from Kyiv to Odessa. He also received ammunition for a rocket launcher, the SBU said.

During the course of his work with the FSB, he made contact with a person in Ukraine’s defense intelligence and was supposed to gauge “the sentiments of employees stationed at the President’s Office security” to help with future assignments.

“Starting from May 2014, payment for my work and collaboration was made through meetings abroad,” the man said. “Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the money accumulated and was transferred abroad simply to my relatives.”

Ukraine’s leadership has been the target of numerous alleged assassination attempts. Last month, Polish officials said they arrested a man on charges of being ready to pass information to Russian intelligence to assist in a possible attempt on Zelensky’s life.

On Saturday, Russia took the step of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/05/04/russia-ukrainian-president-wanted-arrest-warrant-zelenskyy/e24c37dc-0a30-11ef-b186-090cb777107e_story.html" target=_blank>putting Zelensky on its wanted list</a>, Russian state media reported, citing the Interior Ministry’s database, as well as the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk.

Ukraine’s intelligence services also carry out killings of adversaries, though Russia’s top leadership has not been targeted. In 2022, a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, the adult daughter of Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin. Ukraine and Russia’s intelligence service do not acknowledge any involvement in these actions, however.

Last year, the wife of GUR head Budanov, Marianna, was hospitalized after being poisoned with heavy metals, Ukrainian officials said. She recovered after a lengthy illness. Russian officials denied that they were behind the poisoning, calling such reports “routine accusations.”

David L. Stern has worked for news outlets in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia. He has lived in Ukraine since 2009, covering the 2014 Maidan revolution, war in the country’s east and now Russia’s 2022 invasion.

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