The security services are taking all necessary measures to protect the Russian president, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said
Russian President Vladimir Putin is well protected from any potential threats, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. He was responding to a claim by American journalist Tucker Carlson that the administration of former US President Joe Biden planned to assassinate the Russian leader.
On Monday, Carlson told journalist Matt Taibbi that former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “was pushing so hard for a real war, trying to kill Putin, for example… The Biden administration did [it], they tried to kill Putin.”
The conservative journalist did not provide any details of the alleged plot. However, he denounced the purported plan as “insane,” considering the power vacuum it would create in Russia and the potential for Moscow’s vast nuclear arsenal to end up in the wrong hands.
Asked to comment on Carlson’s remarks on Tuesday, Peskov would neither confirm nor deny US attempts to target Putin, nor reveal any knowledge of such plans by officials in Washington in the past. “Russian security services continuously take all necessary measures to ensure public safety and the safety of those under state protection. First and foremost, the head of state,” he told reporters.
US officials have never acknowledged having plans to assassinate any Russian or Soviet leaders. However, Newsweek reported in September 2022 that US officials had considered the option of a “decapitation strike” if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, something Moscow has said it has no plans to do.
The Russian president has reportedly been the target of multiple assassination plots dating back to the early 2000s.
In 2012, the Russian and Ukrainian security services arrested a group of extremists in Odessa for allegedly preparing a bomb attack on Putin, who then served as prime minister. The incident came at a time when Moscow and Kiev enjoyed relatively friendly ties, prior to the Western-backed coup in Kiev.
The most recent known incident occurred in May 2023, after the start of the Ukraine conflict, when Moscow accused Kiev of launching a drone attack on the Kremlin in an attempt to assassinate Putin. According to Russian officials, the president was not in the Kremlin at the time of the attack.
