KYIV -- Ukraine’s SBU security service said it “thwarted” an assassination attempt against President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by a network of five Ukrainian agents linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB.
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Kyiv said on May 7 that the alleged agents, members of Ukraine’s state guard service, had also targeted SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk, military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials.
The developments come on the heels of an announcement on May 4 by Russia's Interior Ministry that it had opened a “criminal investigation” against Zelenskiy, ex-President Petro Poroshenko, and other Ukrainian government officials and placed them on its wanted list.
Poroshenko and Zelenskiy, who has led his country through Russia's full-scale invasion that began in February 2022, joined a long list of foreign officials placed under various criminal warrants, including many others from Ukraine and leaders from Central and Eastern Europe.
It was not immediately clear if the developments were directly linked.
According to the SBU, two colonels from the administration of the State Guard of Ukraine (UDO), whose names were not disclosed, were charged with high treason committed during wartime and preparing a terrorist act.
The two men were arrested after their homes were searched. If found guilty, they face life in prison.
"Counterintelligence and SBU investigators thwarted the FSB's plans to eliminate the president of Ukraine and other representatives of the top military and political leadership," SBU said on Telegram.
“One of the tasks of the FSB agent network was to find performers among the military close to the president's protection who could take the head of state hostage and then kill him,” it said.
Separately, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of using banned toxins on the battlefield, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
However, the OPCW said the accusations were "insufficiently substantiated." It added, though, that "the situation remains volatile and extremely concerning regarding the possible reemergence of use of toxic chemicals as weapons."
The Chemical Weapons Convention states that any toxic chemical used with the intention of causing harm is considered a chemical weapon.
Moscow and Kyiv have not formally asked the OPCW to investigate the allegations, it said.
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Meanwhile, on the battlefield, Russian shelling killed one civilian and wounded eight in several Ukrainian regions, officials reported early on May 7.
One man was killed in Petrivka in the Donetsk region, local administration head Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram, adding that four people were wounded in Kostyantynivka.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov said three people -- including a 16-year-old girl -- were wounded when a guided aerial bomb struck the village of Borova in the Izyum district.
Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported one wounded in his region, while in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian troops shelled the city of Nikopol four times overnight, damaging a gas pipeline, according to regional head Serhiy Lysak.
Early on May 8, Kremlin-installed leader Leonid Pasechnik said an oil depot had caught fire in the Russia-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, blaming the attack on Ukrainian shells.
Another Russia-installed official claimed without providing evidence that Ukraine had used a U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, in the attack. Further information was not available, and Kyiv did not immediately comment.