Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has apparently survived three assassination attempts since his country was invaded a week ago.
The Times reports that Zelenskyy, who has remained in the capital Kyiv throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has been the direct target of Chechen special forces, as well as the Wagner Group, a private military company with close links to the Kremlin.
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Zelenskyy is believed to have been able to survive these attempts on his life partly thanks to intel from rogue senior members of Vladimir Putin’s own intelligence services, who are working to thwart Russia’s invasion.
“I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war,” the secretary of Ukraine’s defence council, Oleksiy Danilov, said. “And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president.”
Over 2,000 members of the Wagner group are believed to be operating in Ukraine. They were deployed to the country weeks before the invasion started to lay the groundwork for overthrowing Zelenskyy’s government. Over 400 are believed to have been embedded in Kyiv with a list of two dozen high-profile government officials to capture or kill.
The Ukrainian government has made finding the group’s members a top priority in combating Russia’s war effort. In recent days, they have had some success in killing a number of Chechen and Wagner Group militants as they attempted to enter the capital.
For now, it remains unclear exactly how weakened the militant groups actually are and whether their operation is being made harder by Russia’s slower-than-expected invasion.
