President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video address released February 28, 2022.
Ukrainian government
- Volodymyr Zelensky survived three assassination attempts this past week, The Times of London reported.
- Ukrainian officials said anti-war factions in Russia’s spy agency were tipping them off.
- Zelensky appears to have increasingly confined himself indoors in recent days.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts from Russia-backed agents in the past week, The Times of London reported.
The attempts were carried out by mercenaries with the Wagner Group as well as Chechen special forces working under Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia’s Chechen Republic and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, The Times reported.
The Wagner Group is a private army owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, another ally of Putin.
Zelensky previously warned that “enemy sabotage groups” were active in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and that he was their “number one target.”
However, several assassination attempts were foiled after Ukrainian security officials were tipped off by people working for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) who opposed the invasion, The Times said.
An assassination attempt by a group of Chechen assassins on the outskirts of Kyiv was foiled on Saturday, with the agents “eliminated” before they could reach Zelensky, The Times reported.
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, gave a similar report on Telegram earlier this week.
“I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war,” he said.
“And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president.”
Around 400 Wagner mercenaries were dispatched to Kyiv and offered a financial bonus by the Kremlin for assassinating more than 20 notable Ukrainians, including Zelensky, The Times reported Monday.
A source close to the Wagner Group told The Times that it was “eerie” how much Zelensky’s security team knew about their foiled hit.
The nature of that assassination attempt is not known, but the mercenaries are expected to launch another attempt before the weekend, The Times said.
At the beginning of the invasion, Zelensky was regularly seen out on the streets of Kyiv, but he has increasingly confined himself indoors and underground, delivering messages to the public via video messages filmed indoors.
With Russia’s invasion showing no sign of relenting, US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday appeared to call on Russia’s elite to stage a Julius Caesar-style assassination of President Vladimir Putin.
“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Graham tweeted on Thursday, referencing the most famous of the Roman emperor’s assassins and the German army officer who tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1944.
Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to agree with Graham on a recent episode of his podcast, saying: “You cut the head of the snake off, and you kill the snake. And right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin.”
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