Russian ‘Day of the Jackal' plot to assassinate Zelensky at Polish airport foiled by Ukraine as would-be hitman arrested

The Irish Sun

23-06-2025

UKRAINE foiled a Day of the Jackal plot to assassinate President Zelensky with a sniper.
Russia's feared FSB spy service had activated a sleeper agent to carry out the hit in Poland.
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Ukraine has foiled a 'Day of the Jackal' plot to assassinate President Zelensky, it has been revealed
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This isn't the first time President Vladimir Putin has been accused of orchestrating attempts to kill Zelensky
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The assassin was set to kill Zelensky at Poland's Rzeszów Airport, where British troops were based
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The would-be killer was a retired military officer, Ukraine's SBU spy service said yesterday.
He had been recruited 'decades earlier' and was planning to kill Zelensky at
It echoes the plot of the Jackal spy thriller – remade with Eddie Redmayne last year – in which a sniper attempts to a kill high value
target
but ultimately fails.
Ukraine's SBU spy chief Lt Gen Vasyl Maliuk said the FSB agent plotted 'several options' including a sniper and a drone.
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He said: 'The task was the physical elimination of President Zelensky at Rzeszow airport.
'Several options were considered. One of them was an FPV drone, the other was a sniper.'
Maliuk said the sleeper agent had been recruited through nostaliga for the collapsed USSR and "nurtured" over many years.
He was detained in a joint operation with
Poland
's Homeland Security Agency.
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He claimed over 500 Russian spies had been caught during the war – including two senior colonels whose job was to guard top officials.
Maliuk said the boss of the FSB's feared Fifth Service,
Ukrainian troops advance as they blast Russian self-propelled howitzer
Details emerged as President Zelensky swooped into London for talks with
Both men have flown through Rzeszow travelling to and from Ukraine.
Zelensky told The Sun he had
He said: 'The first one is very interesting, when it is the first time, and after that it is just like Covid.
'First of all people don't know what to do with it and it's looking very scary.
'And then after that, it is just intelligence just sharing with you detail that one more group came to
Ukraine
to [attempt] this.'
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Ukrainian forces on the front line near Kostiantynvka earlier this month
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Members of the White Angel unit of Ukrainian police officers check an area for residents amid Russia's attack on Ukraine in the frontline town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region
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A factory on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, burns after being hit by multiple Shaheed drones during a Russian strike in April
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Russian special forces parachuted into
In February, Zelensky also revealed
The brave leader revealed that people died inside his office in Kyiv when Vladimir Putin sent hitmen to wipe him out and take over
Ukraine
.
In an interview with the
If everyone wants peace why is the war in Ukraine still raging? The answer is very simple
By Jerome Starkey
EVERYONE says they want peace, so why is the war still raging in Ukraine?
The short answer is simple: Peace means very different things to very different people.
They have different goals and different motives. Vladimir Putin wants total conquest.
And he wants to be remembered as a modern Tsar who restored Russia's imperial greatness.
Ukraine wants to survive, as a sovereign independent nation.
Europe wants a chastened Russia and peace that lasts beyond six months.
Trump just wants a deal — any deal at any price — with minerals thrown in for good measure.
He wants to claim the glory and
The American position is clear from the terrible deal they want Kyiv to accept.
Their
That is an area the size of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It is roughly 20 per cent of Ukraine's sovereign territory. In return, Russia would hand back small pockets of territory, including the
Moscow would also give up its ambitions to capture the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces that its troops have been unable to take by force.
But crucially, for Ukraine, there are no security guarantees.
That means there is nothing to stop Russia catching its breath, rearming and invading again a few months or years later.
The president added: "There were people who wanted to kill [me]. There were gunshots and more.
"Some people were killed here, inside the Presidential Office, others were defending us."
Zelensky did not reveal the number of people killed during the act, nor did he specify if they were Russians, Ukrainians, or both.
Details of the latest plots came as came as a massive missile and drone blitz killed at least eight people in Kyiv and injured dozens more.
Ukraine's President Zelensky said a hospital and several
homes
were hit when Russia fired more than 360 missiles and drones.