Russia Zelensky announces action against traitors

SDA

18.1.2025 - 21:30

ARCHIVE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky listens as US President Biden speaks during an event on the Ukraine Compact on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. Zelenskyi thanked Biden for the new sanctions against Moscow. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP/dpa
ARCHIVE - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky listens as US President Biden speaks during an event on the Ukraine Compact on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. Zelenskyi thanked Biden for the new sanctions against Moscow. Photo: Susan Walsh/AP/dpa
Keystone

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has threatened traitors in his own country with consequences for their support of war opponent Russia. "We will take action against traitors and all kinds of machinations that weaken our state and our Ukrainian society," he said in a video message broadcast in Kiev. "And everyone who takes the path against Ukraine, against the law in Ukraine, must remember that there will be a response."

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At the same time, Zelensky praised the work of the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, including intelligence services, investigative bodies and the public prosecutor's office, as "very good". The president himself did not provide any details. However, the SBU intelligence service and the General Prosecutor's Office had issued an unusually large number of unverifiable reports during the day about suspected Russian collaborators and agents who had been arrested.

Security authorities report several arrests

The SBU, for example, reported the arrest of a head of department at a state-owned bank. The bank manager is alleged to have been involved in financing the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. According to the SBU, there was also a raid on the pro-opposition TV presenter Max Nazarov, who is said to have justified the Russian war of aggression.

In another announcement, there was talk of a spy network of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB being uncovered. The group was said to have been active in the capital Kiev and in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. This could not be independently verified either.

Finally, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the secret service claims to have uncovered a company that is said to have helped Russia build a laboratory for the development of nuclear weapons. Russia, which is a nuclear power and has a large number of nuclear weapons, in turn accuses Ukraine of seeking such weapons of mass destruction.