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By Sean Rayment
A plot to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky at an airport in Poland last year involved a Polish pensioner who had been a Russian sleeper agent for decades, it can be revealed.
The foiled assassination is among what is believed to be dozens of attempts on the Ukrainian president’s life since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
In a closed briefing with local media, Ukrainian security services revealed that the retired Polish military officer had been recruited to assassinate Zelensky at Rzeszów Airport in Poland.
Polish media reported that the attack was thwarted in April 2024 by Poland’s internal security agency, and the man, identified as Paweł K., was charged in May this year.
Less than a month after the attempted airport plot, Ukraine’s security services (SBU) said they had foiled another assassination attempt on Zelensky.
The SBU said in May 2024 that they had arrested two colonels in the State Guard of Ukraine who had reportedly been recruited before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia’s security services, the FSB, to kill Zelensky. The State Guard is usually charged with protecting the country’s top officials.
The suspects were arrested on suspicion of enacting a plan drawn up by the FSB, according to a statement by the SBU.
The head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, said the latest assassination attempt was supposed to be a “gift” from the FSB to Vladimir Putin.
According to the report, Malyuk revealed that a Polish man had been activated by Russia with a plan to assassinate Zelensky using either a first-person view drone or a sniper rifle.
But the plot to kill the Ukrainian president was prevented thanks to a joint effort between the SBU and the Polish internal security services.
These are the most recent assassination attempts by the Kremlin against Mr Zelensky that have been publicised — but they are unlikely to be the last.
In an interview in 2023, Mr Zelensky said he was aware of at least “five or six” attempts on his life, though aides claimed in March 2024 that the Ukrainian leader had been targeted dozens of times. They said he had survived three attempts in one week.
The Times reported that more than 400 mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group were in Kyiv in February 2022, when Putin launched his invasion, with orders to kill Mr Zelensky as part of an attempt to “decapitate” the government in Kyiv.
In August 2023, the SBU detained another Russian informant who was gathering details of Zelensky’s planned trip to Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine.
The SBU said they caught the female suspect “red-handed”, preparing to hand over details of the trip so that Russia could carry out an airstrike against the Ukrainian president.
The suspect was a salesperson in a military store in the nearby city of Ochakiv, who travelled around the territory of the district to film the locations of Ukrainian military sites, according to the SBU. She faces up to 12 years in prison.
On the first day of the war, on 24 February 2022, Russian special forces parachuted into Kyiv. At that time, Ukraine’s Western allies were urging Zelensky to leave the capital and set up a base outside the country.
