Russian Officials Demand Assassination of Zelensky in Leaked Texts

Russian lawmakers are demanding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky be assassinated and his country bombed into oblivion after what the Kremlin touted as a “Ukrainian terrorist attack” in a border region early Thursday.

Every level of Russian government from Vladimir Putin to the Federal Security Service and regional governors blamed the Ukrainian military for the attack in Bryansk, which authorities said had left two people dead and a child injured. The official version of events from the Kremlin is that Ukrainian “Nazis” and “saboteurs” stormed over the border into Russia, invaded two villages, shot up a car, took hostages, and scattered explosive devices throughout the area.

Though a group of Russian volunteers took credit for the mayhem—led by a well-known Russian neo-Nazi who has openly spoken about his past cooperation with the security services, though he now says he is fighting for Ukraine—the incident seems to portend a dark new phase in the war against Ukraine. One after one, Putin’s minions in parliament and mouthpieces on social media immediately called for revenge, arguing that the “red line” had been crossed and it was now time to go to war for real (as opposed to just lobbing cruise missiles at civilians.)

Read more at The Daily Beast.