NIZAMUTDINOV Andrey
Ukraine is agitated by another high-profile incident: on Wednesday, unknown persons fired at the car in which the first assistant to the President of Ukraine Serhiy Shefir was. He himself was not injured, only his driver was wounded. Versions, as usual, are in abundance, including the notorious “hand of Moscow”. The entourage of President Volodymyr Zelensky considers the attempt to be an attempt to intimidate the authorities and put pressure on them. Meanwhile, opponents of the head of state say that it may be a banal staging.
Official versions
According to the official version of events, the attack on Shefir’s car was committed in the area of the village of Lesniki near Kiev. The vehicle, which was not armored, was fired with “about 18 bullets” from automatic weapons. As can be seen in the published photographs, most of the shots fell on the driver’s door, but none of the bullets hit the rear passenger door. As a result, Shefir, who was in the back seat, was not injured. His driver was hit by either one or three bullets (data differ), but still managed to drive a few more kilometers to a parking lot near a large shopping center. He was operated on in the hospital, nothing threatens his life.
Immediately after the incident, representatives of the prosecutor’s office, police, special services, as well as the office of the head of state and the ruling Servant of the People party began to put forward various versions. Among the most common are revenge on the part of organized criminal groups, which the authorities have recently tried to suppress, the actions of certain oligarchs who are dissatisfied with the attack on their business, and, of course, the intrigues of hostile external forces wishing to undermine the Ukrainian statehood. In particular, the head of the parliamentary faction of the ruling party David Arakhamia directly stated about the “Russian trace”. In Moscow, such statements were attributed to “an overly exalted emotional state.”
Targeted at the president
Shefir himself said at a briefing that he “does not understand the reasons” why they could have attempted to assassinate him. In his opinion, the assassination attempt “was carried out with the aim of intimidating the highest echelon of power.” At the same time, Shefir dismissed the version that the attack was the result of a conflict in the presidential team. The Ukrainian media recently really wrote about the disagreements between Shefir and the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak, but the first assistant to the head of state dismissed these assumptions, saying that “there are no conflicts in the team.”
Many politicians and experts also said that the attack on the first assistant could be “just a message to the president”. In their opinion, the shelling was not at all aimed at killing Shefir, which is confirmed by the nature of the bullet marks on the car. But to intimidate, and not so much the assistant as the president himself, is another matter. Moreover, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), during the two years Zelensky was in power, he received various threats 22 times.
And the Ukrainian president himself, who at the time of the assassination attempt was in New York, where he arrived to participate in the UN General Assembly session, also regarded the incident as an attempt to put pressure on him personally. “I think this is just pressure on me,” Zelensky said. And he promised to give the enemies a “strong answer”, adding: “It is impossible to influence me.”
“Warm and close friend”
In principle, the assumption that the assassination attempt on the first assistant to the head of state is an attempt to influence the president is not unfounded, because Shefir, according to Zelensky himself, is his “very warm and close friend.”
This friendship goes back to the days when the current head of the Ukrainian state was still playing KVN. Subsequently, Zelensky and Shefir jointly founded the “Studio” Quarter 95 “. They worked together, wrote scripts for programs and films together, made friends with families, even bought neighboring plots in a cottage village near Kiev. During the election campaign, Shefir was one of the leaders of Zelensky’s headquarters. and literally the next day after taking office, the newly-made president appointed a friend as his first assistant.
In this post, Shefir became a figure, frankly speaking, far from the most public, so after the assassination attempt, many immediately had a question: what was he actually doing? It seems to be engaged in drawing up the president’s personal schedule.
According to the story of a Ukrainian journalist friend of mine (I don’t name my name as usual in order to avoid negative consequences for my colleague), in fact, Shefir had one more “function”: he was responsible for secret ties with the oligarchs. Shefir, according to the testimony of knowledgeable people, had a different nickname – “Zelensky’s wallet.”
If we assume that these people are right, then we can assume another possible motive for the assassination attempt. For the time being, Shefir managed to settle relations with businessmen, especially since, according to the People’s Deputy of Ukraine David Arakhamia, “he is, so to speak, a diplomatic person and <…> really always finds a common language with people.” The assassination attempt may indicate that at some point the presidential aide failed to build bridges with one of the influential people.
Author’s script
However, among the opponents of the current government there are many who consider the shelling of Shefir’s car a staged one. Supporters of this version mention the ineptitude (or, conversely, commendable accuracy) of the attackers, who managed to never get into the rear passenger door, and the unusual restraint of the leadership of law enforcement agencies after the incident, and the statement of Zelensky, who promised that the perpetrators and organizers of the attack they will look for “tough and uncompromising”, but then immediately added: “I can’t say for sure that they will find it.”
The version about staging, of course, strongly smacks of the notorious “conspiracy theory”, but it explains many inconsistencies. And the motive is also clear: the ratings of Zelensky himself and the ruling party collapse in inverse proportion to the increase in utility tariffs and in direct proportion to the fall in the living standards of the population. To this must be added the unfulfilled pre-election promises about the settlement of the conflict in Donbass and the protection of the rights of the Russian-speaking population. Under these conditions, the prospects of being elected for a second term are becoming more and more illusory. According to a number of media outlets, Zelensky’s entourage explored various options for maintaining power, including holding early elections or postponing the next elections to a later date, but in the end they were all rejected as not very realistic.
And then suddenly – please: an attempt on the life of one of the key members of the presidential team. You can’t think of a better gift: under the slogan of fighting enemies, no matter whether external or internal, you can finally shut up the mouths of unwanted media, clean up the political field from opponents and competitors, and at the same time take business away from various “accomplices” and “scapegoats” who will be designated as perpetrators of the assassination attempt. In a word, in the words of the Internet publication “Strana”, “the arson of the Reichstag in Ukrainian.”
Those who doubt the validity of this version can be reminded of the story of journalist Arkady Babchenko, whose murder the SBU staged in May 2018. True, this happened even before the “Ze team” came to power, but why not use the experience of their predecessors? Fortunately, we have our own scriptwriters.
By the way, the episode with the attempt on the life of the head of state conceived by the oligarchs, which ultimately turned out to be a staging, appears in one of the episodes of the Servant of the People television movie – the one in which the comedian Zelensky talentedly played the role of teacher Goloborodko, who became president. True, at that time his friend Shefir did not write the script, but he was one of the producers.
Courtesy: (TASS)
