Russia-Ukraine war: Fresh attempt to assassinate President Zelenskyy foiled, claims Ukrainian media

A leading Ukrainian newspaper on Monday claimed that a second attempt to assassinate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been foiled.

According to The Kyiv Post, a group of 25 people led by the Russian special services was captured near the Slovakia-Hungary border. “Their goal was the physical elimination of the Ukrainian president,” the newspaper tweeted.

On March 4, The Times had reported that Zelenskyy dodged three assassination attempts in the last week of February. The report had claimed that two different outfits were roped in to eliminate Zelenskyy. The outfits comprised the mercenaries of the Kremlin-backed Wagner group and the Chechen special forces.

The reports of the second alleged assassination attempt on Zelenskyy comes at a time when Russia and Ukraine are set to hold in-person talks in Turkey between today and Wednesday.

The Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that the talks between Putin and Zelenskyy would be counterproductive, AFP reported. “Putin has said he has never refused to meet President Zelensky. The only thing that he considers fundamentally important is for these meetings to be well prepared”, Lavrov said in televised comments to journalists.

In his latest speech, president Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is willing to turn neutral and compromise over the status of eastern Donbas as part of the peace deal.

“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it,” Zelenskyy said in Russian.

The fighting between the Russian and Ukrainian forces has entered the 33rd day. About 160,000 people remain trapped in besieged Mariupol without power and the city needs to be completely evacuated, its mayor said according to Reuters. But Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said no humanitarian corridors from the port were possible on Monday due to reports of Russian “provocations.”