The head of the Department of State Protection of Ukraine is dismissed by decree. Two days ago, the security services announced that a network of agents aimed to take the president’s life.
:quality(50)/2023/07/06/64a68815cd1a7_placeholder-36b69ec8.png)
Published
Update
Reading time: 1 min
:quality(50)/2024/05/09/075-sindeyev-notitle240429-npgoe-663d1caccb91a899288177.jpg)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree to dismiss his security chief on Thursday, May 9, after the announcement of a Russian plot against him. This decree has the effect of dismissing “Sergei Leonidovich Rud from his post as head of the State Protection Department of Ukraine”. Two days ago, the Ukrainian security services (SBU) announced the dismantling, a few days earlier, of a “agent network” of the Russian FSB suspected of having prepared the assassination of Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the SBU, these people, accused of responding to orders from Moscow, were “two colonels” of the Ukrainian state service, responsible for ensuring the security of senior state officials. These two senior officers are also suspected of having “transmitted confidential information” to Russia, and they had been recruited by the FSB before the start of the 2022 invasion, according to this source. The suspects are accused of “high treason” and of “preparations for a terrorist attack” and risk life imprisonment.
The plan to recruit soldiers, according to the security services
The two men would have particularly wanted to recruit soldiers “relatives” of President Zelensky’s security service in order to “take him hostage and kill him”, according to the SBU. The security services released a video, in which a man with a blurred face says that he had to recommend to the FSB a person ready to “to block” the president, probably when he was going to record his traditional evening speech. One of the members of this alleged network allegedly obtained drones and explosives, the SBU claimed.
Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, kyiv has already reported several assassination attempts targeting President Zelensky and attributed to Moscow. Russia has long been known to have agents in Ukraine’s military and security apparatus, although Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian attack and the failure of the offensive on kyiv in spring 2022 showed the limits of Moscow’s secret services.
