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Topics: Ukraine
Claire Reid
Ukraine’s government has a contingency plan to guarantee a ‘continuity of government’ in case President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is killed.
The Ukrainian president has survived three assassination attempts since the Russian invasion began, according to reports.
In a recent interview US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said there are plans in place to ensure the Ukrainian government continues to function should anything happen to the president.
During an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Blinken was asked: “And are you working on a contingency plan to support a Ukrainian government without him [ Zelenskyy] at the helm?”
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To which Blinken replied: “The Ukrainians have plans in place - that I'm not going to talk about or get into any details on - to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another. And let me leave it at that.”
Blinken also praised Zelenskyy and other Kyiv officials saying they are 'the embodiment of this incredibly brave Ukrainian people’.
Zelenskyy has previously said he is the main target for the Russian military, but has refused to flee the country.
Speaking last week, he said ‘the enemy' had marked him as 'target number one... and my family as target number two. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state. I will stay in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine'.
Oleksiy Danilov, the capital's Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said an ‘elite fighting unit’ that had been sent to Ukraine to assassinate the president had been ‘eliminated’.
'We are already aware of the special operation that was to be carried out by Kadyrov forces unit. We received the information from representatives of Russia’s Federal Security Service who do not want to take part in this bloody war. The Kadyrov forces unit, which came to kill our President, was eliminated,' Danilov said, as per the Mirror Online.
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