Russian agents infiltrated President Zelensky’s security detail in an attempt to murder the commander of the country’s military intelligence
Maxim Tucker
May 26, 2024
The Times
The assassin was already in position when he was informed of his target. It was May 4, five days before Russia was set to celebrate its national victory day holiday, when he set up a drone control centre in a basement in the Kyiv region. “When you see a convoy with a black Toyota Land Cruiser and a black minibus arrive — communicate their co-ordinates,” his orders read.
The description matched the cavalcade of Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the aggressive young commander of Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR, who has overseen hits on senior Russian commanders, propagandists and collaborators both inside Russia and in occupied Ukrainian territory. The plan was to assassinate him in a co-ordinated missile and drone attack. “The Russians planned to launch a ballistic missile at those co-ordinates while the drone operator was in his shelter, after that he had to launch his drone, film the aftermath of the attack for his handlers, and ram his drone with the rocket-propelled grenade into anyone who survived or came to help,” a top Ukrainian counterintelligence officer said in an exclusive interview, outlining for the first time details of the plot and how they foiled it.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity from deep within a Soviet-era neoclassical building once home to the KGB, the senior member of Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, laid out how President Putin’s spies had infiltrated the upper echelons of President Zelensky’s security detail in an attempt to decapitate Kyiv’s leadership.
Twenty minutes later, the Russians would strike with a second ballistic missile in a “double-tap” attack designed to kill emergency services and conceal evidence of the FPV drone attack, he added. But for months the SBU had been watching the architects of the assassination plan: two colonels in the state protection department tasked with protecting top Ukrainian officials including the president. They had also been watching a third man they suspected of working for their Russian counterpart, the Federal Security Service (FSB): the unnamed assassin. They knew the trio were plotting to kill Budanov and that they were tracking Lieutenant General Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the SBU, as well as Zelensky himself, the officer revealed.
The suspects had brought rocket-propelled grenades, a MON-90 antipersonnel mine and first-person view suicide drones to Kyiv in the build-up to the assassination attempt, he said.
The first suspect, identified by a law enforcement source as Colonel Andrey Huk, is accused of working for the FSB since 2014. He is alleged to have recruited the second man, Colonel Oleksandr Derkach, and relayed FSB orders to the group.
The communications between the assassin and his handlers were intercepted by the SBU using powerful surveillance technology. Maliuk immediately informed Budanov. An armed response team pounced on the assassin and the SBU prepared a rapid operation to sweep up his alleged co-conspirators. “Our goal was to perform a simultaneous arrest so that they cannot inform each other, so they don’t escape,” the officer said.
One colonel was at home at his Kyiv apartment and the other was visiting friends in the Sumy region in northeast Ukraine. Both were armed. To avoid a dangerous gunfight, the SBU lured them from their respective buildings by arranging for them to be called into work unexpectedly.
A quick response special operations force, dressed as ordinary patrol police, took over checkpoints on the men’s route. In wartime Ukraine, checkpoints are commonplace and a stop there would not necessarily arouse suspicion.
Ahead of each man’s vehicle, the SBU officers made a show of searching every civilian car thoroughly to emphasise the stop was routine.
The first man was arrested with relative ease. The second did not park, kept his car in drive, lowered his window and showed his official identification card. “We chose a big, physically fit guy, dressed in a police uniform to make the arrest. He pretended he couldn’t see the ID and moved closer to the car,” the officer said. “Then with one hand, he reached through the window and opened the door, with the other arm he grabbed the guy’s head. Because the car was in drive, it immediately started moving. It was extremely important to suppress him immediately because he had weapons in the car.”
Other SBU officers piled in to stop the car and drag the man from his vehicle, completing the arrest, while armed teams raided the men’s apartments. There they found the explosives and drone components concealed inside spare tyres and a pile of wood, as well as a stash with a secret telephone, the counterintelligence official said.
Both men are said to have confessed during interrogation. The burner phone included communications identifying vehicles and routes used by Zelensky and Maliuk, perhaps in anticipation of striking them in a similar way, as well as communications about their movements.
Once under arrest, the colonels also gave up new information about an earlier Russian attempt to take Zelensky hostage at the very beginning of the war, the officer said. “In February 2022 the number one agent was given a task to identify other state protection officers loyal to Russia and kill those loyal to Ukraine in order to take the president hostage,” he said. “They were to force Zelensky to make a video statement capitulating and saying there was no reason to fight — or he would be killed.”
During the chaotic first days of the invasion, the first colonel had gone so far as to gather other presidential bodyguards and suggest they lay down their weapons when the Russians came, he added. “He told them: ‘We are not the armed forces, we don’t have a particular task to defend Ukraine and I’m not paid enough to organise Brest Fortress here’,” the officer said. The 1941 defence of Brest Fortress by the Red Army against a surprise attack by the Nazis led to the death of more than 2,000 Soviet Union soldiers, with the remaining garrison of 7,000 captured. At the
time, his fellow protection detail officers had dismissed his comments as an emotional response to the invasion and ignored them, the SBU official said. As he was a senior officer, they had not challenged him. After his arrest, when they realised he was acting under orders from the FSB, they were shocked.
Huk’s family, who had fled to Europe and are strongly pro-Ukrainian, were devastated by his arrest. “He was lying to all of them. His wife thought her husband was defending his country, his children thought their father was a Ukrainian hero,” the officer added.
He had, however, been born in Russia, providing a possible explanation for his alleged betrayal. In a video of his interrogations published by the SBU, he said he had received $3,000 a month from the Russian FSB, with an additional $1,000 to make trips to fulfil their orders. Much of this was paid to him and his family during visits to Europe, it is alleged.
The second officer, Derkach, had taken part simply for the money and had hoped the more senior Huk would help his career prospects, the SBU officer said.
Zelenksy’s adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, has said that there have been “a dozen” plots against the president’s life. However, the infiltration of his protection detail appears to be the FSB’s most advanced effort. The attempt to kill Budanov demonstrates an aggressive shift in the agency’s role in the war against Ukraine and its allies, from intelligence gathering to sabotage and assassinations, a role once dominated by the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU.
Recent attacks in the UK and Europe on western weapons supplies to Ukraine using arson and explosives have been blamed on Russian agents and last week the head of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, Anne Keast-Butler, said she was “increasingly concerned” at links between Russian intelligence services and cybercriminals targeting key UK services.
The architect of the FSB’s aggressive new strategy is believed to be the agency’s deputy director, Sergei Korolev, a Putin favourite who is reported to have deep ties to the Russian mafia. A dossier on him provided to The Times by Ukraine’s military intelligence branch, HUR, describes him as “Putin’s wolfhound”, an attack dog tasked with collecting information on other members of the Russian government and removing potential rivals the Russian leader wants dismissed by legal means. The dossier also states that he is an enigmatic character, born in Kyrgyzstan and thought to be about 60 years old, who prefers to work in the shadows.
HUR accuse him of orchestrating the latest plot as a present for Putin before the planned victory day celebrations on May 9. The SBU said the assassination attempt was approved and co-ordinated personally by the FSB’s director, Alexander Bortnikov. “They have moved from trying to recruit intelligence agents to preparing terror attacks, sabotage and assassinations, trying to create a pro-Russian resistance movement,” said the counterintelligence officer, noting that the SBU had already unmasked some 2,500 Russian agents in Ukraine. “In fact, there is no pro-Russian movement in today’s Ukraine. The Russian intelligence services are very powerful, but so far the SBU is outplaying them.”
Additional reporting by Marian Prysiazhniuk.
Maxim Tucker was Kyiv correspondent for The Times between 2014 and 2017 and is now an editor on the foreign desk. He has returned to report from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February. He advises on grantmaking in the former Soviet countries for the Open Society Foundations and prior to that was Amnesty International’s Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus. He has also written for The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek and Politico.