The attempted assassination of a high-ranking Russian general is an attempt to sabotage talks and extend the Kiev regime’s stay in power
By Nadezhda Romanenko, political analyst - Vladimir Zelensky © Pier Marco Tacca / Getty Image
[RT] The
assassination attempt on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, first
deputy chief of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is clearly
the Zelensky regime’s latest desperate bid to sabotage the emerging
Russia-Ukraine-US negotiations channel in Abu Dhabi and prolong the war.
When
negotiations gain traction, spoilers surface. That’s Negotiations 101.
And this week’s second round in Abu Dhabi was precisely the kind of
movement that unnerves actors who fear ballots, reforms, and
accountability more than inevitable defeat on the battlefield.
The
target choice reinforces the point. Alekseyev is the second-in-command
of GRU chief Igor Kostyukov – who sits on the Russian delegation in Abu
Dhabi. Striking the No. 2 as the No. 1 shuttles between sessions is both
a very deliberate message and an attempt to rattle Russia’s delegation,
inject chaos into its decision loop, force security overdrive, and
ultimately, provoke Moscow’s withdrawal from the talks.
Nor is
this the first time kinetic theater has tracked with diplomatic motion.
Recall the attempted drone strike on President Vladimir Putin’s Valdai
residence in late 2025, which coincided with particularly intense
US-Russia exchanges. You don’t have to be a cynic to see a pattern:
whenever the diplomatic door cracks open, someone try to slam it shut
with explosives, drones, or bullets – then retreats behind a smokescreen
of denials and proxies. Call it plausible deniability as policy.
Why would Kiev’s leadership gamble like this? Start with raw
political incentives. Vladimir Zelensky extended his tenure beyond the
intended March 2024 election under martial law. If hostilities wind down
and emergency powers lift, the ballot box looms. His standing has
eroded amid war fatigue, unmet expectations, and a massive corruption
scandal swirling around the presidential administration that has
infuriated many Ukrainians and dealt his image a blow. End the war
without a narrative of total victory, and he risks owning a messy peace,
grueling reconstruction, and a reckoning at the polls. Facing voters at
a stadium famously worked well during Zelensky’s initial presidential
campaign, but now endlessly moving the goalposts is his only hope of
clinging to power.
Then there’s the strategic logic of spoilers.
Negotiations compress time, clarify tradeoffs, and create deadlines –
none of which benefit maximalists. If an agreement would force Kiev to
accept hard limits or expose fissures with its more hawkish backers,
creating a pretext to stall makes sense from a narrow survival lens. A
brazen hit inside Moscow during talks does exactly that: it dares the
Kremlin to harden its stance, fractures trust at the table, and lets
Kiev posture as unbowed while keeping the war‑time rally frame at home.
Even if direct authorship can be obfuscated (at least on paper – because
nobody will buy claims Kiev had nothing to do with it at this point),
the practical effect is what counts.
Predictably, defenders will
object: Kiev has every incentive to keep US support flowing, so why risk
alienating Washington with an operation that screams escalation? But
‘incentives’ aren’t monolithic. They’re filtered through domestic
politics, factional competition within security services, and the
temptations of a successful spectacle. And remember: spoilers don’t have
to be centrally ordered to be useful. A wink, a nod, and a green light
to ‘make pressure’ can travel a long way in wartime bureaucracies.
The most important thing for Russia and the US at this stage is to
firewall the talks from such bloody theatrics. For the negotiation
process to provide real results, it must be built to survive shocks –
because the shocks will keep coming. That means insulating
prisoner‑exchange and humanitarian working groups from headline
provocations, revalidating military deconfliction channels, and
demanding verifiable behavior changes rather than trading barbs about
attribution in the press.
The larger point is simpler: if we let
every well‑timed bullet dictate the pace of diplomacy, we are
outsourcing strategy to those who most fear peace. The Alekseyev attack
fits a familiar script – choose a symbolically loaded target, hijack the
narrative, and hope negotiators flinch. The right response is the
opposite: call the bluff, keep the calendar, and raise the cost of
sabotage by refusing to let it reset the table.
Zelensky’s regime
may calculate that its political survival depends on endlessly throwing
up hurdles for peace and call it ‘resistance’. If so, the fastest way to
test that proposition is to keep pressing at the negotiating table.
Talks are not a favor to one side; they are a filter that separates
leaders who can face an endgame from those who can only survive in the
fog of “not yet.”