The Office of the President reacted to "Putin's promise not to kill Zelensky"

The former prime minister, who stepped down in the summer of 2022, said he met with Putin in March shortly after Russia's full-scale invasion began.

The Associated Press reports that.

According to Bennett, he asked Putin if he was planning to kill the Ukrainian president.

"He (Putin - ed.) said, 'I will not kill Zelensky.' I then told him, 'I must understand that you are giving me your word that you will not kill Zelensky.' He said, 'I am not going to kill Zelensky,'" Bennett revealed.

According to him, he conveyed this promise to Zelensky.

Bennett also claims that Putin then agreed not to insist on Ukraine's disarmament and that Ukraine in response allegedly abandoned its NATO course.

In his turn, advisor to the head of the presidential office Mykhaylo Podolyak called this statement "strange insider information".

There are strange insides about the "mediation": Putin allegedly gave "guarantees not to kill" and "the West broke promising negotiations". But all this is a fiction," he wrote on his Twitter.

Podolyak said it was not NATO expansion but Russia's desire to destroy Ukraine that was behind the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also reacted to Bennett's words. He said that the Russian dictator did not stick to his words.

In the past, Putin promised not to occupy Crimea, not to violate the Minsk agreements, not to invade Ukraine, but he did it all. Do not be fooled: he is an experienced liar. Every time he promised not to do anything, it was part of his plan," the Ukrainian foreign minister wrote on Twitter.

In January, the Independent reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived more than 12 attempted assassination attempts since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

For example, Ukrainian Defence Minister advisor Markian Lubkivskyy told CNN in an interview that militants of the Russian private military company Wagner were planning an attempt on Zelenskyy as well as on Prime Minister Denys Shmygal.

They wanted to kill the leadership of Ukraine: our president and prime minister. This was the goal, some of them were sent to Ukraine unsuccessfully," Lubkivsky said, adding that all evidence has been presented to the International Court of Justice.

At the very beginning of the Russian invasion, Zelenskyy did ask Bennett to become a mediator in negotiations with Russia. In early March, the latter went to Moscow.