Search Resumes in Rubble of Strikes That Killed at Least 7 | CPT PPP Coverage

“Officers detained the woman red-handed in her attempt to pass intelligence to the Russians,” the statement added, without providing further details.

The accusations could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate comment from the Kremlin or Russia’s Ministry of Defense.

The agency did not specify the dates of Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit but said the agency had detected the woman’s efforts and employed additional security measures ahead of time.

The Ukrainian leader has made at least two trips to the Mykolaiv region in the past two months. He traveled to the area in June to assess the damage from flooding after the breach of the Kakhovka Dam and again last month, when he visited hospitals and met with doctors in the city of Ochakiv.

In its statement on Monday, the agency did not name the woman or say when she had been detained, saying only that she was a resident of the small, historic port city of Ochakiv who had previously worked as a saleswoman in a Ukrainian military store. She has been placed in custody and could face up to 12 years in prison, it added.

Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 18 months ago, the United States and Britain had warned about Moscow’s desire to push Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky from power.

When Russian forces invaded, in late February 2022, Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky was believed to be the “No. 1 target” in their assault on the capital, Kyiv. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky, said that March that there had been “more than a dozen attempts” to kill the Ukrainian president.

Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky has been asked many times about how it feels to be the target of so many assassination attempts.

“It becomes repetitive — you remember that film, ‘Groundhog Day’?” he joked in an interview with Axios in May 2022, adding: “I wake up in the morning and it’s still the same.”

While Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky did not comment directly Monday on the news from the Security Service, he said in a statement that in meetings he had been briefed by the agency’s chief about “the struggle against traitors” in Ukraine.

The country has been waging a war against spies and collaborators who give help to Russian forces while its soldiers simultaneously confront them on the battlefield. Since the invasion, fears have persisted that Russian sympathizers would share the locations of sensitive Ukrainian targets. Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky has taken an aggressive approach on going after potential collaborators.

Last July, he dismissed two senior law enforcement officials, saying they had not been nearly aggressive enough in weeding out traitors.

Marc Santora contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Nataliia Novosolova from Vinnytsia, Ukraine.