Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU, aka SSU) announced yesterday that they had arrested a head of the State Security Administration (SSA), along with a fellow official, as allegedly part of a conspiracy to assassinate top government and military officials. The SBU posted on Telegram that the two were planning to kill, in particular, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, SBU head Vasily Maliuk, and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov. The two had apparently been arrested three days earlier, on May 4. The Strana news outlet has identified the detainees as SSA head Col. Andrey Guk and his colleague, a Col. Derkach. Top War reported that, since Guk was a close friend and godfather of the head of the SSA, Sergei Rudy, there might be an internal squabble going on in Kiev.
SBU head Vasyl Maliuk said that he had personally supervised the investigation of the assassination network overseen by Russia’s FSB. He laid out the scenario: “One of the tasks of the FSB’s intelligence network was to find perpetrators among the military close to the president’s security detail who could take the head of state hostage and then kill him.” Apparently, the team’s role was not to assault Zelensky, but to provide his whereabouts for the Russian military.
Maliuk continued: One recruit would track the target, giving coordinates of the house to be hit with a rocket. That would be followed with a drone attack and a second rocket. One of the arrested men was said to have brought to Kiev drones, rocket-propelled grenade charges, and anti-personnel mines. That man was alleged to have been recorded speaking to his FSB handler. The FSB selected the house where the victim was to be brought. Maliuk said that the attack was to have been “a gift to Putin for his inauguration.”
