During the meeting between President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Odesa, Russia fired missiles at the city, one of which exploded 500 metres from the leaders. So there is reason to believe that this time Russia was aiming at the Ukrainian president, which means it was an attempt to assassinate him.
Information about the attempts on Zelenskyy’s life is quite contradictory. Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Office of the Presidential Prosecutor, counted more than ten such attempts in March 2022. Some of them are said to have been ordered by Putin himself. Therefore, President Zelensky can be considered lucky at the moment. The Ukrainian leader is certainly not alone in the list of those who have survived (or not) political assassination attempts. Therefore, Kommersant Ukrainian 
has compiled a selection of some of the most high-profile assassination attempts on state leaders in world history.
1. Kennedy’s assassination
22 November 1963. The assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was one of the most famous and mysterious events of the 20th century. He was shot in the head with a sniper’s rifle in Dallas, Texas, while travelling slowly in a cockpit. He died instantly. This crime sparked many conspiracy theories and left a huge mark on world history.
2. The assassination attempt on Reagan
on30 March 1981, US President Ronald Reagan was wounded in a gun attack by John Hinckley. The bullet broke the president’s rib and passed through his lungs, causing massive internal bleeding. In addition to Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and police officer Thomas Delahunty were wounded.
The assassin was arrested on the spot. It turned out that he was trying to attract the attention of actress Jodie Foster. The murderer is still alive and is undergoing involuntary treatment in a psychiatric clinic.
This incident led to increased presidential security measures in the United States. But Reagan, as a legendary optimist, won the fight and continued his presidential term with enthusiasm.
3. Lincoln’s assassination
on 14 April 1865, US President Abraham Lincoln was shot dead by Confederate John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Booth fired a bullet from a Derringer pistol at Lincoln as he watched the play American Brother with his wife and guests. This tragic incident was the culmination of a deep divide in a society where Lincoln represented the force of progress and change.
4. The poisoning of Yushchenko
At the time of the assassination attempt, Viktor Yushchenko was just preparing for the role of state leader. on 5 September 2004, Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin during his election campaign. It was one of the most famous and shocking incidents in Ukrainian politics. As a result, the president’s face was permanently disfigured by the effects of chemical poisoning. The day before, Viktor Yushchenko had two dinners, one of which was allegedly the one where he was poisoned. The assassination attempt has not yet been solved.
5. Assassination attempts on Mao Zedong
on12-13 September 1971, there was an assassination attempt that resulted in the death of the person who carried it out. It was the Chinese Defence Minister Marshal Lin Biao, who allegedly wanted to assassinate Chinese leader Mao Zedong. According to the most common version of events, in 1971, he was the organiser of as many as three assassination attempts on Mao, the last of which took place on 12 September. First, a plane attacked Mao Zedong’s Shanghai residence from the air, then his personal train was derailed, and finally, an assassin disguised as a courier was sent to Mao’s house.
The Chinese leader survived, but the organiser of the assassination attempts, Lin Biao, crashed a plane in Mongolia the very next day. According to the Chinese authorities, he was on his way to the USSR to seek political asylum.
6. The attempted assassination of Gorbachev
on 7 November 1990, a simple Soviet locksmith, Alexander Shmonov, attempted to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the USSR Communist Party, during a festive demonstration. He shot at the leader with a rifle at a distance of 50 metres, but at the last second, a policeman in the crowd spotted him and managed to withdraw his weapon. The attacker was declared mentally ill and subjected to compulsory treatment. He did not repent of his actions. “I regret that I missed, not that I fired,” Shmonov said.
7. The explosion at the Grand Brighton Hotel
on 12 October 1984, an explosion occurred at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, England. A conference of the Conservative Party was taking place there, attended by its top leaders, including the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Patrick Magee, a member of the Irish Republican Army, planted the explosives in the bathroom of a room he rented five floors up from the conference room. However, even from this distance, the bomb killed five conference participants and injured 31 others. Thatcher herself was in her room at the time of the explosion, but was not injured.
8. Attempts on Fidel Castro’s life
From 1960 to 1965, during the first years of Castro’s rule, the CIA organised 8 attempts on his life, and these are the only attempts officially recognised by the US government. It is symptomatic that these attempts were developed and implemented during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, whose assassination is number one on our list. In his book, one of Fidel’s bodyguards claimed that there were 100 to 200 assassination attempts on the Cuban leader, some say as many as 600.
There were many scenarios of assassination attempts, both realised and unrealised: from a small military operation to the sending of a “femme fatale” (in the latter case, Fidel himself gave her a gun to shoot him). In any case, Castro seems to be the leader not only in terms of the number of assassination attempts he has survived, but also in terms of their scenarios. They will be enough for more than one season of an exciting TV series.
9. The assassination of Indira Gandhi
on31 October 1984 , Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her bodyguard, a member of the Sikh ethno-religious group with whom the Indian government had a conflict. In June 1984, government forces destroyed a Sikh separatist base in the Golden Temple, killing 84 government forces and between 492 and 800 separatists. After that, the Sikhs vowed to take revenge on the prime minister. The perpetrators of the assassination attempt were Beant Singh, whom Gandhi decided to keep as her personal guard despite the fact that he was a Sikh, and Satwant Singh, a young policeman. They pierced Gandhi’s body with three pistol bullets and an automatic rifle burst. After that, a wave of protests and violence against Sikhs swept across the country.
10. The assassination of Olof Palme
on 28 February 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated when he and his wife were walking home from the cinema. A man shot him twice with a Smith & Wesson revolver. There is still no consensus in Sweden as to whether the attack was solved. Initially, the investigation blamed the murder on petty criminal Christer Petersson for many years, but only in 2020 did the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office announce that Palme was killed by designer Stieg Engström. It was no longer possible to convict him, however, as he committed suicide in 2000.
The Swedish prime minister was a social democrat and supporter of neutrality, known for his anti-American and anti-Soviet stance, and for his criticism of apartheid in South Africa. That is why there are many versions of his murder: from an intelligence operation to a conspiracy by right-wing extremists. There is also a version that Palme was killed by accidental confusion with the famous drug trafficker Sigg Södergren.