There is no head of state or government in the world with an international agenda as tight as the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Probably not. Every day there is at least one institutional phone call with his foreign colleagues, often also an official visit from a European leader Kyiv and more and more often the invitation as a virtual exceptional speaker in some western parliament. Only one limit: Zelensky does not move out of his bunker War.
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Russian killers for Zelensky
This was confirmed in an interview with Mediazona, an independent Russian newspaper: “I am ready to go to any part of this planet, but certainly not now and not to Moscow.” A few days ago, a BBC cameraman entered the “Situation Room ‘ and then shared the fear and thrill of being in a place where everyone present ‘is in danger at all times’. Beginning with Zelenskyy.
But the international meetings and “procession” of foreign leaders provide the most effective shield against the Russian temptation to kill him. And it cannot be ruled out that this is a precise plan, the result of a common will to keep it alive. The Ukrainian President spoke to his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on the phone yesterday and, most notably, met the Prime Ministers of Spain and Denmark, Pedro Sanchez and Mette Frederiksen, in Kyiv. Each leader is ready to travel normally by train and traversing war zones. Like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And before him the Presidents of the European Commission and Council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel. And again the Austrian Federal Chancellor. Even President Joe Biden, or at least US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said he was ready to go to Kyiv to shake hands with Zelenskyy. A daily diplomatic shield that makes it very difficult for Putin should he ever be tempted to plan a killer attack on the big enemy.
Yesterday was the anniversary of a brilliant assassination attempt from above, April 21, 1996. Two Russian laser-guided missiles hit the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzochar Dudaev, who had been unwise to use the satellite to speak to a liberal deputy in the Duma . His call was intercepted by a reconnaissance plane, and to make sure they liquidated him, the Russians launched two more planes armed with guided missiles.
THE STRATEGY
Military analysts agree that if Putin wanted to, he could destroy the Kiev bunker with Zelenskyy inside. However, his idea would be different. According to Professor Francesco Strazzari of the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa, the tsar would have preferred to use military pressure on Kyiv to obtain the dissolution of the Ukrainian government and the resignation of Zelenskyi or his dismissal by his own staff. Or an action not entirely attributable to Moscow, but carried out by non-regular pro-Russian forces.
THE MURDER
Another plot to assassinate Zelenskyy, if true, was revealed yesterday by Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, dating back a month before the invasion. On February 3, Putin reportedly asked Chechen leader Kadyrov to use his paramilitary fighters to eliminate Zelenskyy. Three groups who would have been responsible for the operation. According to the Ukrainian secret service, one would have been eliminated by the military in Kyiv. The other two would have drifted and found themselves in Donetsk and Mariupol. It is also interesting that Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, have discussed the issue of Zelenskyy’s successor in the event of capture or assassination, because it is important that any potential successors are pro-Western and therefore able to continue to resist the Russian invasion . The Speaker of the Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, was identified with it, and the Prime Minister, Denys Smihal, in third place in the line of succession. Worries coming from afar, from the shock of Dudaev’s “execution”.
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