“Do you intend to kill Zelensky?” Bennett recalled asking Putin, during an almost five-hour interview he gave to Israel’s Channel 12.
Russian President Vladimir Putin promised not to assassinate his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky when he met with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last year in the early days of the war.
“Do you intend to kill Zelensky?” Bennett recalled asking Putin, during an almost five-hour interview he gave to Israel’s Channel 12, that was posted on YouTube on Saturday night.
In that conversation, he recounted details from his well-known trip to Moscow on Shabbat in early March 2022, in an attempt to help broker a peace deal between the two sides.
Putin’s pledge
While Bennett was not able to help end the hostilities, he was able to secure a pledge from Putin not to kill Zelensky, who at the time was hiding in a secret bunker to prevent such an assassination.
Not afraid
Zelensky had returned to his office and made a video explaining that he was not afraid, Bennett said.
He explained that he had gone to Moscow at Zelensky’s request on the belief that there was a small window of time in which a deal could be reached to end the war.
“We went in absolute secrecy on a decrepit plan from Israel through the Kazakh region… because we couldn’t fly over the black sea. On the way we prayed and made a blessing over the Sabbath wine, it was very emotional,” Bennett said.
They landed in Moscow where it was cold and raining, in what was his first trip to that city, Bennett recalled adding that he was joined by MK Ze’ev Elkin, then the Housing and Construction Minister who is originally from Ukraine and speaks Russian fluently. He had in the past acted as a translator for Netanyahu in his meetings with Putin.
From Moscow, they went to Berlin, to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Schutz and together they went to France, Great Britain and the United States, all of whom had known about his visit.
“Everything I did was coordinated with the United States, Germany and France,” he said.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post