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As Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine hits the three-month mark, it has been rumoured that a number of assassination attempts have been made on the life of Vladimir Putin.
According to Ukraine's chief spy, the major attempt was made around two months ago.
The nation's Chief of Defence Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov claimed the tyrant was attacked in an "unsuccessful attempt" on his life.
He told Ukrainian Pravda: "Putin was assassinated…
"He was even attacked in the line of, as they say, representatives of the Caucasus not so long ago.
"This is non-public information. Absolutely unsuccessful attempt, but it really took place… It was about 2 months ago."
"Once again, he was unsuccessful. There is no publicity about this event, but it took place. "
The ploy to kill the Kremlin leader is not the first we've seen to fail, however.
Some stories of botched assassination attempts – and even successful ones – are almost too strange to believe…
Taking down Osama bin Laden by vaccine
Osama bin Laden was killed during Operation Desert Storm, but when the famous US operation was put into place, there was a different tactic used to try and take down the Al-Qaeda leader.
The CIA had undertaken endless hours of recon to try and figure out where bin Laden was holed up, and when they got a fair idea, they only needed proof.
With that in mind, they recruited a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to run a door-to-door polio vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, with the hope of getting close enough to bin Laden to extract a DNA sample.
Of course, it didn't work out, and once the plan was uncovered it caused huge distrust of vaccines in the region.
US President sleeps through gunfight
Harry Truman had ordered renovations to be done on the White House during his stint as President of the US. This meant he had to briefly move into nearby Blair House in 1950.
It was there that on November 1 that year, two Puerto Rican nationalist gunmen attempted to shoot their way in to try and kill him.
Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo were planning to attack at the same time that there was uprising on their home patch. They managed to get into the house, where they were swarmed by security agents from the Secret Service.
Where was the President at the time? Having a nap after a big lunch.
He did briefly open a window when he heard noise downstairs, but was quickly told to return inside.
Torresola was killed in the incident, while Collazo was sentenced to life in prison.
Shot by an umbrella
At the height of tensions during the Cold War, a Bulgarian dissident writer by the name of Georgi Markov was waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge.
While he was awaiting the arrival of the bus, which would've taken him to his office in the BBC, he felt a sharp stabbing pain in the back of his thigh.
He quickly turned around and saw a man hastily picking up an umbrella before rushing into a taxi and driving off.
When Georgi arrived to work, he noticed that a red pimple had formed where he had felt the pain. That evening he developed a fever and was taken to hospital where he died four days later.
An opponent of Bulgaria's then-Communist government, officials later discovered that Markov had been poisoned with ricin which appeared to have been injected into his thigh, possibly by the umbrella.
Trying to impress Jodie Foster
Everyone knows that it was John Hinkley Jr that tried to take out then-President Ronald Reagan in March of 1981.
But not many will know the particular reason why.
You see, Hinkley Jr had become obsessed with Taxi Driver in the buildup. The movie starred Robert De Niro as an antihero that wants to assassinate a presidential candidate and Jodie Foster as a child prostitute.
More accurately, Hinkley had become obsessed with Foster, going as far as to move to near Yale University and enrolling in a class so he could be close to her and leave her notes.
He began to panic that she wasn't noticing him, so decided to try and assassinate the president to get her attention.
Originally, he had planned to shoot Jimmy Carter, but was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm before he could.
Instead, he approached Reagan outside of a Hilton Hotel in DC and fired six shots at him; none hit Reagan directly, but one bullet did ricochet off of the presidential limousine to hit Reagan in the chest, puncturing his lung and causing serious internal bleeding.
Hinkley was tried for attempted murder after the attack, but found not guilty by reason of insanity.
- Vladimir Putin
- Terror
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