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Ukraine’s security service has said it has detained an informer accused of helping Russia plot an attack on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he visited a flood-hit region.
The SBU security service said the detained woman was gathering intelligence to try to find out Mr Zelenskiy’s itinerary before his visit to the southern Mykolaiv region.
It published a blurred image of the woman being detained by masked officers in a kitchen, as well as some phone messages and handwritten notes about military activity.
On Telegram, Zelenskiy said the head of the SBU had updated him about the “fight against traitors”.
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The SBU said Ukraine was aware of the plot ahead of time and had put in additional security measures during Zelenskiy’s visit. It alleged the suspect was helping Russia prepare a “massive air strike on the Mykolaiv region”.
She was allegedly seeking data on the location of electronic warfare systems and warehouses with ammunition.
The SBU said its officers kept monitoring the suspect to get more information on her Russian handlers and her assignments. Officers then caught the woman “red-handed” as she attempted to pass intelligence data to Russian secret services, the SBU said.
It said the woman lived in the small southern town of Ochakiv in the Mykolaiv region and formerly worked in a store at a military base there. She allegedly photographed locations and tried to get information from personal contacts in the area.
She may face a charge of unauthorised dissemination of information about the movements of weapons and troops. If convicted, she could serve up to 12 years in prison.
Meanwhile Russian forces are targeting the Kharkiv oblast in an attempt to take back the north-eastern region almost a year after it was liberated by Ukrainian troops, according to a defence minister in Kyiv.
In the latest strikes on the border region, including the bombing of villages near the city of Kupiansk, two people were said to have been killed and three wounded, while a woman was reported to have died in an attack in Kherson in southern Ukraine.
Hanna Maliar, a Ukrainian deputy defence minister, said: “They have a plan. The occupiers want to regain the territories they lost in Kharkiv region.”
Last September, Ukraine scored a significant victory after surprising the Kremlin with a counteroffensive that managed to push Russia out of territories in Kharkiv that it had occupied since the early days of the full-scale invasion.
Russia has continued to pepper the region with artillery attacks and cruise missiles but in recent weeks, as the Ukrainian focus has moved to the south and east of the country, there has been an increase in the intensity of the assault.
Officials in Kyiv said they were well aware that Russia was “trying to exploit the situation”.
The ministry of defence in Moscow has claimed that its infantry have taken some settlements, although the scale of the claimed Russian progress has been denied in Kyiv.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, reported on Telegram that “the Russians shelled the village of Kucherivka, in Kupyan district, hitting a house”. He added that “two dead and three injured people are known”.
One person was also reported to have been killed and several injured during a “difficult night” of Russian shelling of Kherson, said the city’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.
A 59-year-old woman died while two rescuers and a 93-year-old woman were among those injured in the attacks, which targeted residential areas in the city centre, he wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine recaptured Kherson and parts of the surrounding region in November after months of occupation by Russia.
Yermak, who is Mr Zelenskiy’s closest aide and who has been in Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, for the latest talks over an internationally agreed peace plan, said a new prisoner swap had also been completed.
Under the agreed deal, 22 Ukrainian soldiers returned home, including two officers along with sergeants and privates who fought in different parts of the front. Some of them were wounded.
A video posted on Telegram showed soldiers wrapped in blue and yellow Ukrainian flags posing for pictures and shouting “Glory to Ukraine.”
“Today we have returned 22 Ukrainian fighters home from captivity,” Mr Yermak said, adding that the oldest was 54 and the youngest 23. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Following the talks in Saudi Arabia, at which Russia was absent, China’s foreign ministry said on Monday the summit on the Ukraine crisis had helped “consolidate international consensus”.
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China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, “had extensive contact and communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis ... listened to all sides’ opinions and proposals, and further consolidated international consensus”, its foreign ministry said in a written statement. – The Guardian