Ukraine has a plan in case the country's president is assassinated amid Russian invasion as experts believe that such an event would be a psychological shock, Politico reported. Since Volodymyr Zelensky refused to evacuate at the start of the war, he played a key role in mobilising international support to fight Russia. Owing to this, Russian lawmakers and ultra-nationalist military bloggers are clamouring for him to be the first target, the report claimed.
A number of assassination attempts have already been made on Zelensky, but all of them were prevented, it added. “A few weeks after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, a top Zelensky adviser, Mikhail Podolyak, disclosed there had been at least a dozen serious assassination attempts on his boss by Russian sabotage and intelligence teams, including Chechens and Wagner mercenaries attempting to breach Kyiv’s heavily guarded and monitored government quarter,” the report claimed, adding, “Zelensky himself reportedly opened a Zoom meeting with U.S. senators shortly after the invasion saying it might well be the last time they would see him alive.”
What is Ukraine's plan if Zelensky is assassinated?
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According to the Ukrainian constitution, the line of legal succession of power says that when the president cannot fulfil his duties, his duties are taken over by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament). Adrian Karatnytskyi, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Centre, said that Ukraine has a "strong leadership team", and in the event of the president's death the country would have a “collective government”.
{{/usCountry}}According to the Ukrainian constitution, the line of legal succession of power says that when the president cannot fulfil his duties, his duties are taken over by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament). Adrian Karatnytskyi, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Centre, said that Ukraine has a "strong leadership team", and in the event of the president's death the country would have a “collective government”.
{{/usCountry}}The governing board would likely consist of Stefanchuk as chairman, along with Andrii Yermak, a former film producer, foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and defence minister Oleksii Reznikov. Valerii Zaluzhnyi would remain the country’s top general, Adrian Karatnytsky said.
"The country has reached a point of very substantial solidarity and national unity, so if something terrible happened to Zelensky, it would not be as decisive as you might think," he said, noting that Ukraine had created a "well-honed" administrative, military and diplomatic machine.
“I don’t want to say that Zelensky is hardly irrelevant to this. But I think the country’s unity is the indispensable thing,” he said.