‘Ukrainian connection’ possible in Trump shooting – opposition leader

Vladimir Zelensky has a motive to see Donald Trump dead, Viktor Medvedchuk has said

The assassination attempt on US presidential candidate Donald Trump may have been tied to Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk has said in a letter to the former and possibly future US president.

Trump narrowly escaped death at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania this weekend, when an assassin’s bullet injured his ear. The attacker, a 20-year-old American, was killed by the Secret Service. His motives have not been officially disclosed.

“Dear Mr. Trump, you have become a personal enemy of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi [Vladimir] Zelensky, and this scoundrel will stop at nothing to prevent you from winning the presidential election,” Medvedchuk wrote on Tuesday. “I think that there will be a Ukrainian trace in the case of the assassination attempt on you.”

According to Medvedchuk, the current government in Kiev has an interest in prolonging the conflict, because ending it would bring into question their legitimacy. Zelensky’s “criminal regime” would lose US support when Trump returns to the White House and faces “deserved punishment for its crimes,” he wrote.

“The day before the assassination attempt on you, Mr. President, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence stated that the Ukrainian authorities had attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a few days earlier, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine promised to destroy Ukrainians who advocate peace with Russia,” Medvedchuk told Trump.

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Zelensky ‘not afraid’ of Trump presidency

The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly said he would negotiate a swift end to the Ukraine conflict. Doing so, however, would mean “the loss of power by the Nazi regime of Zelensky and his American curators from the Biden administration,” Medvedchuk also noted.

Trump was already ahead in the polls after the June 27 debate, which caused upheaval in the Democratic party and calls to replace President Joe Biden on the ticket with someone else. The Republican’s popularity surged following the failed assassination attempt. 

Zelensky said on Monday that he was “not afraid” of a change of power in Washington, because his government had “a strong relationship with the Republican side of Congress and the US political class.” 

Medvedchuk was the leader of the party Opposition Platform – For Life, the second-largest group in the Ukrainian parliament, until his arrest in April 2022. The party was banned three months later, and Medvedchuk was sent to Russia in exchange for several Ukrainian POWs in September.

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