Vladimir Putin’s “puppet” in Ukraine has been left fighting for his life after being shot in occupied Crimea during an assassination attempt.
The former MP Oleg Tsarev, 53, was reportedly in line as being a pro-Moscow puppet ruler of Ukraine if Putin’s Russian invasion had been successful. However, Tsarev had recently become highly critical of the Russian government’s war tactics.
This was followed with an ominous warning on state TV in Russia, where a leading Kremlin propagandist had said “those who find themselves between them [Russian security services] will be crushed into dust.”
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According to Kremlin politician Vladimir Rogov, Tsarev is now reportedly “critically” wounded and in an unspecified intensive care unit. Despite the public remarks made by the Kremlin, initial reports were that the ex-MP’s attack was the result of a Ukrainian hit squad.
Hours before the near-fatal shooting, Tsarev had told pro-war TsarGradTV: “Russia took Crimea and lost all of Ukraine. We have started a war.” Ukrainian Telegram channel Crimean Wind suggested Tsarev may have been killed by Putin's FSB security service, as it disputed key details of Russian reports over the shooting of the would-be stooge president.
“An ambulance was not called to the scene, the hospitals cannot find him, the investigators of the local Investigative Committee have no idea what happened to him,” said the channel. “Everything points either to a staging [of his shooting] or to the fact that he was killed by the FSB.”
Tsarev was originally an ex-MP and presidential candidate in Kyiv but he switched sides to Russia in 2014. He became speaker of the putative Novorossiya parliament set up in Donetsk and Luhansk regions after Putin grabbed the territory.
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