16 days ago, Volodymyr Zelensky awarded Igor Obolenskiy the Hero of Ukraine star. On Friday, July 31, the same man was supposed to become the target of an assassination attempt. The President announced that the commander of the 2nd corps of the National Guard "Hartiya" had survived an assassination attempt, and the attacker and his accomplice have been detained.
I spoke with the commander of "Hartiya" Igor Obolenskiy. There was an assassination attempt on Igor today. The attacker and his accomplice have been detained. The necessary procedural actions are underway
According to Zelensky, acting SBU chief Oleksandr Poklad reported on the progress of the case, and the investigation is ongoing.
Who is the target
Obolenskiy, callsign "Cornet" — is not a typical "desk" commander. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he served in the Special Operations Forces, and later joined the volunteer formation "Hartiya", which was created in Kharkiv. In early 2023, the unit was reformatted into the 13th National Guard brigade, which Obolenskiy took over and began restructuring according to NATO standards. The effectiveness of this restructuring ultimately became the argument for the General Staff's decision in 2025 to deploy an entire corps based on the brigade — which is why Obolenskiy is now commanding not a brigade, but the 2nd corps of the National Guard of Ukraine. On July 15, this was officially recognized: the rank of Hero of Ukraine.
Why now and who benefits
The timing of the assassination attempt is telling: not a year after his appointment, but two weeks after the most high-profile public award. This makes Obolenskiy media-recognizable, and makes a strike against him symbolic — not just the removal of a commander, but an attempt to show that no status, including Hero of Ukraine, protects against physical elimination. For Russia, "decapitation" of successful, reformed units is a cheaper and faster tool than victory on the battlefield against the same corps.
According to information that emerged in the first reports from the investigation, the executor was not prepared long and professionally — he was remotely persuaded by people who posed as SBU employees, and convinced that Obolenskiy was supposedly a "traitor". As "proof", he was sent an artificially generated photo allegedly showing the commander against the backdrop of the Kremlin in a T-shirt with Russian symbols. This is not a one-time technology: if the scheme is confirmed by the investigation, it fits into already known logic — recruitment of executors through messengers for kopecks and fake "evidence" calculated for people without critical thinking, rather than for ideological sympathizers of Russia.
Reaction from the opposition
The "Hartiya" corps itself responded publicly and harshly:
Thank you for your support and attention. We know that our enemy is insidious. We are ready for anything, on the front lines and in the rear. We will respond to the assassination attempt on the battlefield
Zelensky did not directly name Russia as responsible, but made it clear that the response would be asymmetrical — not procedural, but military.
We will definitely respond to this attempt to strike at Ukraine and a Ukrainian commander. I thanked Igor for his service and wished him to strike the occupiers even harder
Formally, these are two different reactions — military (the corps promises to respond on the battlefield) and state (the president promises a response as such). But both avoid the single specificity: what exactly "we will respond" means and who exactly is behind it, while officially it has not been said — this is left to the SBU investigation.
The question for the coming weeks is simple: will the SBU disclose the full recruitment scheme of the executor — with the names of curators and the route of communication — or will the case, like dozens of similar ones, remain in the category of "procedural actions are underway" without public details that could prevent the next attempt against another commander.
