- Ukraine said on Tuesday it had defeated Chechen forces sent to assassinate President Vladimir Zelensky.
- Defense chief Alexei Danilov said double agents in the Russian security agency had provided information about the plot.
- Zelensky warned last week that he was the “number one target” for Russian assassins sent to Kyiv.
The head of Ukraine’s security and defense said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had thwarted a assassination plot against President Vladimir Zelensky, using a signal from members of Russia’s security services.
An elite group of Chechen special forces – known as the Kadyrovites – was sent by Russia to “eliminate our president” but was “directly destroyed”, said Alexei Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, according to a post in Telegram on Tuesday from the Center for Strategic Communications. Axios was the first to tell the story.
Danilov said Ukraine had “received information” about the plot against Zelensky from people in Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB. The alleged informants “do not want to take part in this bloody war,” Danilov said.
“And thanks to that, I can say that Kadyrov’s elite group, which came here to eliminate our president, was directly destroyed,” he said.
He added that the alleged killers are now divided into two groups, one destroyed in the town of Gostomel and the other under fire.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last Thursday, there have been several reports of assassination attempts against Zelensky. Zelensky himself said that “enemy sabotage groups” had entered Kyiv and that he was their “number one target”, although he insisted on staying in the capital.
On Monday, The Times of London reported that The Wagner Group, a Russian private militia allied with President Vladimir Putin, had sent 400 mercenaries to Kyiv to kill Zelensky in exchange for what the paper described as a “beautiful financial bonus.”
Danilov’s statement on Tuesday was one of the latest victories highlighted by Ukrainian authorities, who often say they have inflicted heavy casualties on Russian troops trying to advance on Ukraine’s main settlements.
But the accuracy of these claims remains unclear; Moscow is silent about the exact losses suffered by its forces, as well as the existence of alleged death squads against Zelensky and his government.