Ukraine’s intelligence agency says it has detained a woman allegedly helping Russian authorities plan an air strike on an area President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited last month.

The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, said “the spy” had attempted to establish where and when Mr Zelenskyy would be, during his trip to the Mykolaiv region, in the country’s south.

The area is partly occupied by Russian forces and is near the front lines of the war in Ukraine, which has raged since February last year.

The SBU claimed the woman, who lived in the region, used local connections to try and work out the President’s itinerary, and captured photos and videos of “Ukrainian facilities”.

An SBU statement said: “Occupiers planned to use these data to prepare a new massive air strike on the region.”

SBU spokesperson Artem Dekhtiarenko claimed the woman had also attempted to identify the location of Ukrainian military assets in the Mykolaiv area.

He said the organisation monitored the woman “to document the criminal actions of the enemy accomplice in order to obtain new information about her Russian handlers and the tasks she had received”.

The SBU claimed it arrested the woman when she tried to pass the information on to Russian authorities, and said she would remain in custody while its investigation continued.

It said she could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

The claims could not be independently verified.

Ukraine regularly announces it has arrested people accused of spying for Russia and claims to have foiled numerous assassination attempts on Mr Zelenskyy since the invasion began last year.

Colin Alexander, a senior lecturer in political communications at Nottingham Trent University, said it was unclear what Russia had planned to do with any information it may have received.

“There is always a danger of magnifying an occurrence like this to a level that it doesn’t really warrant,” he said.

“We should be cautious about some of this messaging, it’s clear from the information that we have the woman who was arrested was not in Zelenskyy’s inner circle.

“This was a member of the public.

“There are probably 1,000s of people like this in Ukraine who are part of a network of Russian intelligence and each play a small role.”

Russian forces have, so far, failed to occupy the capital of the Mykolaiv region, which is also called Mykolaiv.

However, the southern port city remains a target for air strikes.

Its water supply has also been disrupted since April last year, due to the conflict.

During his trip, Mr Zelenskyy visited hospitals and spoke to medical workers, children and injured soldiers.

“I thank our medics for their great work. For bringing back to life children, who are our future, including those from other regions. We should appreciate medical workers even more and improve the conditions of their very important work,” he tweeted at the time.