How Ukraine protects its president and the government against coups | DW News

How Ukraine protects its president and the government against coups | DW News

now to Ukraine where authorities say they’ve arrested four people after Security Services foiled plans for what they say is a Russian backed coup attempt the domestic intelligence agency says a group of conspirators had plotted to start a riot storm the Parliament building and then replace the leadership on Sunday during constitutional Day Celebrations Kee claims it’s been the target of several coup plots over the last few years well our correspondent Nick connley in key told me more about what the security services have been saying this is basically still just their claim we’ve seen some pictures we had a press release we’ve seen blurred pictures of these men some of whom look to be in middle or late middle age don’t look particularly Marshal don’t look particularly fit or threatening in a kind of obvious way we’ve seen some images of pistols and rifles uh and as you mentioned there the claim is that they were planning protests in Kiev that would oppose the leadership the government here would the implication being claimed that they are illegitimate and then try and Lead those people that would have turned up to that demonstration not all of whom would have been in on the plot that is the line to the parliament to try and stop Parliament uh functioning and then to use that as a kind of trampoline to take overpower quite how convincing quite how big their chances were we can’t tell it sounds like from the press release that the intelligence agencies here were on their case pretty early on and were watching and reading everything they were doing uh but this is obviously in normal times a crazy story but in Wartime in Ukraine on a day like today here in K where you’ve had four air raid alerts and the real threat of ballistic missiles being used it is just Another Story Another Day here in Kiev and something that seems uh part for the course of most people there was a lot of talk at the start of this war about plots to kill President zalinski how frequent are these kinds of threats to Ukraine’s government so we tried to look into how many attempts to kill ziny there had been and we couldn’t find any particularly convincing numbers one thing certainly that you find over and over again is a quote from one of zelinski’s closest advisers podak who said that within the first month of the war there were around 10 attempts on zelinsky’s life we can’t say quite how serious some of them were but certainly just as recently as May of this year there was a very serious seemingly plot within his security detail two Colonels very high ranking officials in the kind of State security service were arrested and are still in detention for um allegedly working with the Russians to kill zinski others seemingly more amateur but even if these attempts don’t have any chance of success this is all part of the bigger picture Russia is making progress on the front lines but it is very slow and costing Russia huge numbers of lives and I think they still think that with a bit of money a bit of uh subterfuge and recruiting people through social media and through old contacts they can create protests here on the streets of KF they can create chaos they can knock the government of course and they can achieve you know comparatively a lot with relative L small resources so these attempts are seemingly never ending they come from different sides on the smaller side you have people you know informing the Russians about Russian about Ukrainian rather military movements you have uh talk of people trying to discredit the government doing strange things that they then reported and shared on Russian social media but this is certainly a situation that Ukraine and its politics has to live with it and a brief word about the sorts of precautions that are in place to protect the president and the government well certainly there is is very tight security whenever V zalinski turns up his appearances are not trailed in advance he turns up uh and you hear about it after he’s left but it isn’t like Kiev is a city that is permanently on lockdown this is still a city where civilians move around pretty freely and where there is light touch security most of the time those security officers are in plain clothes and are not out on the streets with guns so certainly for now it is working and it is working in a way without you know major inconvenience to the millions of people living here in Kev Nick Connelly in Kev thank you so much

Four people have been arrested after Ukraine’s security service says it has foiled a Russian-backed coup attempt.
The domestic intelligence agency revealed that a group of conspirators had plotted to start a riot, storm the parliament building and replace the leadership on Sunday during Constitution Day celebrations. Kyiv claims it has been the target of several coup plots over the last few years.

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