Russia spy arrested in Poland for ‘plotting assassination attempt on Zelensky & scoping out airport used by Ukraine’

POLAND has arrested a man on suspicion he was working with Russia to plot the assassination of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Suspect Paweł K has been accused of helping the Kremlin's security services to plan the attack that was foiled by Poland with help from Ukraine.

Pawel K was detained yesterday and charged with "reporting his readiness to act for foreign intelligence" and could face up to eight years in prison.

A joint investigation, led by Polish and Ukrainian law enforcement, found he "established contacts with the Russian Federation directly involved in the war in Ukraine".

A statement said: "His tasks included the collecting and providing of military intelligence for the Russian Federation with information on the security of the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport".

His intention was "to help Russian special services plan a possible attack" on President Zelensky, it added.

The officials did not specify whether Moscow had actually received Pawel K's offer of intelligence or what the response was.

Polish prosecutors said Ukraine alerted them to their suspicion about the suspect and shared information that led to his arrest.

The investigation is ongoing.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin said: "This case is yet another proof that Russia is a threat not only to Ukraine and Ukrainians but also to the entire free world.

"The Kremlin's criminal regime is constantly trying to undermine European and global security."

This is not the first time an alleged assassination attempt has been made against President Zelensky following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In fact, the Ukrainian leader survived an alleged attempt on his life while touring the Black Sea port of Odessa just last month.

Zelensky claimed other people died and were injured when a Russian missile struck near his motorcade while he was with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Both delegates were a mere 500 to 800 metres from the strike which killed five people, according to a Ukrainian navy spokesperson.

Just weeks after Vladimir Putin's troops invading enemy territory, it was reported that the Ukrainian military had "destroyed" a Chechen outfit tasked with "eliminating" Zelensky.

A report from Pravda in March 2022 stated that Putin had "assigned the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov to do the dirtiest work and personally instructed him during a meeting" the previous month.

The outlet also claimed that the Chechen group were tasked with taking out Ukrainian leaders before they were repelled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Zelensky's presidential adviser, Mikhail Podolyak, previously revealed that the Ukrainian leader had survived more than a dozen attempts in the first two weeks of the war alone.

Podolyak told Pravda there rather than the "two or three" attempts reported in the media, it was in fact "more than a dozen".

"We have a very powerful intelligence and counterintelligence network," he told the outlet two years ago.

"They monitor it all and all these DRGs [Russian reconnaissance groups] are being eliminated on the way.

"That is, we understand, all the plans and our counterintelligence is working on them."