Woman ‘preparing assassination of President Zelensky’ is arrested in Ukraine
A woman who was reportedly planning the assassination of Volodymyr Zelensky has been arrested in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained the unnamed woman and began questioning her about her alleged involvement in a plot to kill the Ukrainian president during his visit to the port city of Mykolaiv last month.
The woman was a Russian informant who was collecting intelligence about Mr Zelensky’s planned visit, SBU officials said.
She is accused of trying to find out where and when the president was travelling and reportedly filmed the locations of Ukrainian facilities, including ammunition depots and electronic warfare systems.
The woman was caught ‘red-handed’ by authorities while trying to pass over the collected intelligence to Russia, the SBU claimed. If convicted, she could face 12 years in prison.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained the unnamed woman and began questioning her about her involvement in a plot to kill Zelensky during his visit (pictured) to the port city of Mykolaiv last month
Zelensky awards Ukrainian service members as he visits a military hospital near Mykolaiv
The suspect was living in the Ukrainian city of Ochakiv – a small city in the southern Mykolaiv region. She is understood to have been a former saleswoman in a store for one of the region’s military units.
The SBU allege that she was gathering the information as part of a plot to carry out an air strike on Mykolaiv and assassinate Zelensky.
When detectives learned of the woman’s plans, ‘additional security measures’ were taken to protect Zelensky, officials said.
‘The Ukrainian Security Service continued to document the criminal actions of the enemy accomplice in order to obtain new data about her Russian ‘curators’ and the tasks received,’ they said in a statement on Monday.
Mr Zelensky has been a prime target for the Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when he refused to leave Kyiv as Moscow’s forces approached.
It came as Russian shelling struck a nine-storey residential building in the city of Kherson, killing one person and wounding four others.
Regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Kherson had endured a ‘tough night’ as the Russians ‘covered the central part of the city with fire’.
In the north-eastern Kharkiv province, a 57-year-old woman was killed and four people were wounded in Russian shelling.
Mr Zelensky has been a prime target for the Kremlin since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when he refused to leave Kyiv as Moscow’s forces approached
Ukrainian soldiers fire the M777 artillery at their artillery position
It comes after Ukraine damaged two key bridges leading into Russian-occupied Crimea with ‘Storm Shadow missiles supplied by the UK’.
The Chonhar bridge linking mainland Ukraine to Crimea was damaged and a small bridge across the Tonky Strait was also shelled.
Continuing attacks by Mr Zelensky’s forces are making it increasingly hard for Putin’s invading army to get on and off the peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia is also facing a revolt from its own nationals – with anti-Putin militia groups claiming to have blown up a fuel and ammunition depot inside occupied Ukraine.
The Freedom of Russia Legion – which was formed in spring 2022 to fight for Ukraine – claimed a mortar strike on the village of Zaitseve in the Donetsk region.
Dramatic drone footage captured the moment that the depot was transformed into a raging inferno as huge plumes of smoke billowed into the sky.
The attack came in the wake of Russia staging three waves of attacks on Sunday morning on a Ukrainian air base believed to house British- and French-supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles.
The Freedom of Russia Legion has announced the destruction of an ammunition depot in Zaitsevo, Donetsk region
A triple attack saw explosions in the vicinity of Starokonstantinov air base in Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region, according to reports.
The scale of any damage was not clear but Sergei Gamaly, the head of Ukraine’s regional military administration, said a ‘series of explosions’ had hit the area.
Russia had sent up seven Tu-95 nuclear-capable strategic bombers to unleash strikes with conventional Kh-101 missiles, reports said.
Russian sources said the Starokonstantinov base was used by Ukrainian Su-24 warplanes to fire Storm Shadows and French version SCALP-EGs at occupied lands.
The devastating attack came as grain silos were, again, targeted overnight in Kharkiv, and during a national celebration of Ukraine’s Air Force, with Zelensky taking time to praise his ‘heroes of the sky’ on social media.