Plot to assassinate Putin direct path to nuclear war: Duma speaker

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
29 Jan 2025 10:07

Vyacheslav Volodin stresses the need for Russian society to "understand the level of challenges and threats that we are facing."

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State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin (TASS)

A plot to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as discussions on the matter, constitute a crime and pose a serious threat to global security, warned Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.

"The plot to assassinate Putin, mere discussions of it is a crime, a serious threat to global security, a direct path to nuclear war. All international institutions should view it as a basis for an investigation," Volodin wrote on Telegram.

He stressed the need for Russian society to "understand the level of challenges and threats that we are facing, and, therefore, understand their own responsibility" amid heightened tensions.

His remarks come after Tucker Carlson, a prominent US journalist, claimed that the former US President Joe Biden's administration had considered assassinating Putin.

According to Carlson, US authorities were willing to engage in a reckless confrontation with Moscow, with former Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly "pushing so hard for a real war" between the United States and Russia during his final two months in office.

"The Biden administration did, they tried to kill Putin," the former Fox News anchor said in the latest episode of his podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show.

"Which is insane," he added. "That’s demented, that you would even think of something like that. So why were they? Because chaos is a screen that protects them."

Carlson did not present any evidence to support his claim regarding the alleged assassination plot.

Carlson, who was dismissed from Fox News in 2023 amid the network’s legal challenges over its broadcast of false claims regarding electoral fraud in the 2020 US presidential election—a conspiracy he frequently promoted on his show—has often criticized US military assistance to Kiev and asserted that Ukraine is "not a democracy."

In February, he traveled to Moscow for an interview with Putin and returned to Russia in December to speak with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.