Ukraine war briefing: ‘Rocket, drone, rocket’ – alleged plots to kill Zelenskiy, Budanov | Ukraine

Two Ukrainian security officials have been detained for an alleged Russian plot to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. Luke Harding writes from Kyiv that Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said it had uncovered a network of agents run by Russia’s FSB who also intended to kill Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov and SBU head Vasyl Malyuk.

The plans included finding someone from the presidential entourage to capture and kill Zelensky, said SBU; and to kill Budanov and others with a missile strikekamikaze drones fired locally, then another missile strike to destroy drone evidence.

The SBU named three FSB intelligence officers behind the operation Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Alexey Kornev. In the intercepted messages, Perlin called the missile attack on Budanov a “big bird” and the drone a “small bird.” He emphasized: “The order is rocket, drone, rocket.”

SBU said it recovered drones, warheads and mines by one of the arrested Ukrainian alleged accomplices. He and others face charges of treason and terrorism. One of the alleged agents was a a colonel serving in the State Security Service of Ukraine, said he met Kornev secretly before 2022 in a neighboring European country.

Ukrainian prosecutors said they had examined debris from 21 of about 50 North Korean ballistic missiles fired by Russia between late December and late February. This was reported to Reuters by the office of the Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin the missile failure rate seemed high: “About half of North Korean missiles lost their programmed trajectories and exploded in mid-air; in such cases the debris was not retrieved.

Russia’s use of North Korean missiles threatens nearly two decades of consensus among the permanent members of the UN Security Council on preventing North Korea from expanding its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Russia recently vetoed the annual renewal of UN sanctions monitoring against North Korea.

Russia supplies refined oil to North Korea at levels that appear to violate Security Council mandates, a US official said on Thursday, adding that the US was planning new sanctions in response. The US will continue to work with other countries to impose sanctions “against those who work to facilitate transfers of arms and refined oil between Russia and the DPRK”.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said it was open to discuss sending Patriot system to Ukraine after Germany’s appeals to EU and NATO member states.
Iohannis met with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday.

Ukrainian forces on Tuesday attacked an oil storage depot and caused a large fireinjuring five people, on the outskirts of The Russian-controlled city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, said the region’s leader, chosen by Russia. There is no official Ukrainian statement about the incident. Russian-backed and funded separatist fighters seized control of large parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine in 2014 after Moscow annexed Crimea.