Woman arrested in plot to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

KYIV, Ukraine – Ukrainian security officials said Wednesday they had arrested a Ukrainian woman “red-handed” on suspicion of helping Russian intelligence services, including preparations for an assassination attempt on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 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.

“The perpetrator tried to establish the time and list of locations of the approximate route of the head of state in the territory of the region,” the statement said.

Zelenskyy 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 Zelenskyy visited.

A Ukrainian government official speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information said that the woman, who was not identified, was detained on Aug. 1.

The government official said Ukrainian security services prevented the woman from collecting information about Zelenskyy’s visit, thus foiling the assassination plot.

The SBU “took comprehensive measures to keep her from the visit, and she did not have any information about where (Zelenskyy) 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 the woman 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,” the SBU statement said.

“To gather intelligence, she traveled around the territory of the district and photographed the locations of Ukrainian objects,” the statement said. If found guilty, the woman could face 12 years in prison, the SBU said.