Yahoo TV

"Twelve shots fired, three of those hit the driver," detailed the president. "This is the price of changes in the country. This is the price of reform."

Serhiy Shefir, the top aide and a close personal friend of Zelenskiy's, escaped unscathed, but his driver was badly wounded and hospitalized.

Zelenskiy, a former comedian who became president in 2019 after entering politics and promising to rid Ukraine of corruption, used most of his speech to call for U.N. reform.

"Time to wake up," the president said while calling for an international response to Russia's annexation of Donbass Crimea. "I invite all those nations to join the Crimea Platform Declaration to condemn the occupation and to demonstrate that you are against changing borders by force in the world."

While not mentioning Russia by name, Zelenskiy criticized Russia's veto power inside the U.N. Security Council and urged the United Nations to "regain faith in ourselves" and called the world body a "retired superhero who's long forgotten how great they once were."