Zelensky Assassination Plot Foiled in Poland

Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service on Monday released details of an alleged assassination plot against President Volodymyr Zelensky by a former Polish soldier.

The plot, which was to be carried out in Rzeszow in south-eastern Poland, dates back to early last year, when arrests were made in both Ukraine and Poland.

The soldier had been recruited by Russian intelligence services decades ago, motivated by a sense of nostalgia for the Soviet Union, SBU head Vasyl Malyuk said.

A drone or a sniper was to be used to assassinate Zelensky at the city’s airport, according to Malyuk. Among those involved were two former Ukrainian colonels from Zelensky’s bodyguard, whose arrests Malyuk announced in May last year.

The former Polish soldier was detained by Poland’s ABW counter-intelligence agency in April last year, based on information provided by the SBU. Polish prosecutors charged him last month with collaborating with a foreign intelligence agency.

Rzeszow, a regional capital, lies about 70km (43.5 miles) from the Ukrainian border and serves as a key hub for arms deliveries and political visits to Ukraine.

When travelling abroad, Zelensky typically takes a train from Kyiv to Rzeszow, where he then boards a Ukrainian government plane.

Meanwhile, the teaching of Ukrainian is to be abolished in the regions of the country occupied by Russian forces, the Moscow-based Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday.

This is due to the “changing geopolitical situation in the world”, the newspaper said, citing an Education Ministry draft curriculum.

Among the reasons given by Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago was the alleged suppression of the Russian language in Ukraine. He pledged that Russia would behave differently and would protect the use of Ukrainian.

Until now, Ukrainian has been an obligatory subject in schools in those parts of the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions occupied by Russian forces.

It has been an optional subject in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and in Crimea. The same goes for Bashkortostan in southern Russia.

The new curriculum does not provide for the teaching of Ukrainian at all.

Attempts by US President Donald Trump to launch talks to end the war have stalled, with Moscow rejecting a ceasefire along the current front line.

At the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin described Russians and Ukrainians as a single people, saying that Ukraine as a whole belonged to Russia.