Agency: The adviser, Serhiy Shefir, was unharmed, but his driver was wounded when shots were fired at his car outside Kyiv on Wednesday by a person or people hiding in the woods by the road. The authorities said it was an assassination attempt.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would immediately return to Ukraine from New York, where he was attending the U.N. General Assembly to speak against Russia’s military intervention in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky said that while he considered the attack a message to him personally, he would not be deterred by it. “Saying hello to me by shooting from the woods at the car of my friend is weakness,” he said.
The motive: An adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff linked the attack to the president’s efforts to limit the influence of oligarchs. The authorities said there were no suspects and that no one had been arrested.
Context: Shefir, 57, is considered the president’s closest confidant. Together with his brother and Zelensky, they founded a television production company in 2003 that propelled Zelensky to fame. The two are neighbors.
