Why is Zelensky playing deadly mind games with Putin?

Many have weighed in on how Vladimir Putin’s reign will end. Now it is the turn of Volodymyr Zelensky, asserting that he will be killed by his own. But is this wishful thinking, prediction or trolling?

The Ukrainian president was speaking in a documentary, when he said that

There will definitely be a moment when the fragility of Putin’s regime will be felt inside the state and then the predators will devour a predator. It is very important, and they will need a reason to justify this. They will remember. They will find a reason to kill the killer. Will it work? Yes. When? I don’t know.

There is often a degree of deliberate mischief in official Ukrainian pronouncements about the future of the Russian state and its president: the war is a political as well as military venture. Military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, for example, has been especially assiduous in trolling the Kremlin, asserting that Putin has cancer and will die ‘very soon’ (in January), was about to be toppled by a coup (in May), and that Russia will be broken up into numerous new states (back in February of last year).