Did the former Israeli Prime Minister convince Putin to spare Zelensky’s life?

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet may have been the reason why President Vladimir Putin didn’t kill his Ukranian counterpart in the early days of the invasion according to a recent interview. 

While speaking with Israeli journalist Hanoch Daum, Bennet claimed that Putin promised in March 2022 that he wouldn’t kill President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“I knew Zelensky was under threat, in a bunker,” Bennet told Daum according to a translation from The Independent. “I said to him [Putin], ‘Do you intend to kill Zelensky?’ He said, ‘I won’t kill Zelensky’."

“I then said to him ‘I have to understand that you’re giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelensky.’ He said ‘I’m not going to kill Zelensky.’”

During the days leading up to the war, Bennet emerged as one of the few global leaders who could position himself as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine according to a March 2022 Associated Press report. 

“Although he has not yet delivered any major diplomatic breakthroughs,” wrote Josef Federman on March 16th, “he is one of the few world leaders to speak regularly to both sides, providing a rare glimmer of hope for ending the 3-week-old war.”

While Bennet's attempts to mediate the conflict ultimately failed, he does believe he made a difference in at least helping to save Zelensky’s life. 

After getting Putin’s promise that he wouldn’t kill Zelensky, Bennet called the Ukrainian president to tell him the good news. 

“I’ve just come out of a meeting, he is not going to kill you,” Bennet told Daum, “He asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ I said 100 percent he’s not going to kill you.’” 

“Two hours later, Zelensky went to his office, and did a selfie in the office, [in which the Ukrainian president said,] ‘I’m not afraid’ and everything,” Bennet added according to The Independent. 

The Kremlin has yet to comment on the former Israeli Prime Minister's revelations but some officials in Ukraine have called Bennet’s statements untrue. 

“Strange ex-officials' claims on ‘mediation’ that Putin allegedly gave ‘guarantees not to kill’ & ‘the West interrupted promising negotiations’ are fiction,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukranian politician and one of Zelensky’s key advisors.

“Ru-invasion isn’t about ‘NATO expansion’, security guarantees or sanctions, it's RF's desire to destroy [Ukraine] & kill Ukrainians,” Podolyak added. 

Whether or not Bennet’s actually secured a promise from Putin to spare Zelensky’s life is irrelevant. We know now that within the first weeks of the war, Putin sent several assassination squads to Kyiv to hunt down and kill President Zelensky. 

In March 2022, Zelensky survived at least three separate assassination attempts according to reporting from Newsweek’s Gerrard Kaonga. In addition, the New York Post’s Lee Brown claimed Zelensky survived at least a dozen within the first two weeks of the war. 

"We are well aware of the special operation that was to take place directly by the Kadyrovites to eliminate our president," the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov said at the time.