Kiev spy chief says several attempts made to assassinate Putin

There have been several attempts to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to military intelligence service chief Kyrylo Budanov on Saturday.

"But as you can see, they were unsuccessful," Budanov told New Voice, a Ukrainian website. The general did not say what his claim was based on. He also did not say whether his or other Ukrainian intelligence services might have been involved in the plans.

Budanov has made provocative comments in the past, as a form of psychological warfare. The Kremlin responded, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov making clear that the president's safety would be protected. "The threat from the Kiev regime is obvious," he told TASS state news agency in Moscow.

Budanov further said Putin was no longer a compromise figure accepted by all of the Russian elite, but, because he has been in power for more than 20 years, Russians are afraid of losing him.

He said when Putin dies, he imagines the response would be similar to the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953. For people in the Soviet Union at that time, "their whole world collapsed, they didn't know how to go on living," Budanov said.

Little is known about attempted attacks on Putin during his lengthy time in power. An assassination attempt by men from the Caucasus failed in May 2022, shortly after Putin ordered the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Budanov said. There is no evidence of this.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once said in an interview that he had stopped counting the number of times he has heard about plans to attack him. Russian special forces hunted him down in Kiev immediately after Russia's invasion in February 2022.

In May 2024, the Ukrainian government reorganized the staffing at the top of Zelensky's personal security team, after two officers were allegedly hired by Moscow to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Budanov and other officials.