Ukraine’s intelligence service has arrested two senior officials who embedded themselves in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s security team with a plan to kill him, writes The Telegraph.

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) said the two Ukrainian colonels were secretly in the pay of Russia’s FSB security agency and planned the assassination as a “gift” to Vladimir Putin.

“Counter-intelligence and SBU investigators disrupted the FSB’s plans to eliminate the president of Ukraine and other representatives of the highest military and political leadership of the state”, the service said.

It also released nine photos on the Telegram social media service showing the two suspects being arrested, a rocket-propelled grenade, bomb-making equipment and an alleged Telegram conversation on assassination plans.

The SBU said both men worked for Ukraine’s State Security Service, the unit tasked with protecting top officials. It said the FSB had recruited them more than two years ago ahead of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The intelligence service said: “One of the tasks of the FSB intelligence network was to search for executors among the military close to the protection of the President who could take the Head of State hostage and later kill him”.

It also said the double agents’ movements had been closely documented, including a trip to an unnamed Ukrainian region to pick up weapons and conversations with their FSB handler.