Ukraine's president survived at least 3 assassination attempts from Russian-backed agents in the past week, report says

• The Times of London reported that Volodymyr Zelensky survived assassination attempts this week.
• Ukrainian officials said anti-war factions in Russia's spy agency were tipping them off, without giving further specifics.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived at least three assassination attempts from Russia-backed agents in the past week, The Times of London reported.

The Times reported that the reported attempts were carried out by mercenaries with the Wagner Group as well as Chechen special forces working under Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia's Chechen Republic and close ally of President Vladimir Putin. The Wagner Group is a private army owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, another ally of Putin.

Insider could not independently verify the report. Russia has run assassination teams in Europe for years, linked to its military spy agency, the GRU. But there was no evidence of these attempts provided or explanation of how close they had gotten to Zelensky.

Zelensky previously warned that "enemy sabotage groups" were active in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and that he was their "number one target."

The Times report said that several assassination attempts were foiled after Ukrainian security officials were tipped off by people working for Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, who opposed the invasion.

One assassination attempt by a group of Chechen assassins on the outskirts of Kyiv was foiled on Saturday, with the agents "eliminated" before they could reach Zelensky, the report said, without giving further specifics.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, gave a similar report on Telegram earlier this week.

"I can say that we have received information from the FSB, who do not want to take part in this bloody war," he said. "And thanks to this, the Kadyrov elite group was destroyed, which came here to eliminate our president."

Danilov did not provide evidence of any of the attempts to kill or capture Zelensky.

A source close to the Wagner Group told The Times that it was "eerie" how much Zelensky's security team knew about their foiled hit.

The Times reported on Monday that about 400 Wagner Group agents were dispatched to Kyiv and offered a financial bonus by the Kremlin for assassinating more than 20 top Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky.

At the beginning of the invasion, Zelensky was regularly seen out on the streets of Kyiv, but he has increasingly confined himself indoors and underground, delivering messages to the public via video messages filmed indoors.

With Russia's invasion showing no sign of relenting, US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday appeared to call on Russia's elite to stage an assassination of President Vladimir Putin, referencing the killing of Julius Caesar.

"Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?" Graham tweeted on Thursday, referencing the most famous of the Roman emperor's assassins and the German army officer who tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1944.

The Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to agree with Graham on a recent episode of his podcast, saying: "You cut the head of the snake off, and you kill the snake. And right now, the snake is Vladimir Putin."