A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was the target of an assassination attempt, authorities said Wednesday, adding to a host of challenges facing the country’s leader at home and abroad.

       Serhiy Shefir, a former producer of Mr. Zelensky’s comedy show before he became president, escaped unharmed, but his driver was wounded and is currently hospitalized after more than 10 bullets hit the car, police said. Investigators are probing the case as an attempted murder, officials said.

       “All I can say is that the assassination attempt was carried out with the aim of intimidating the highest echelon of power," Mr. Shefir said after the incident, according to news agency Interfax Ukraine. “But we must understand that Volodymyr Zelensky is a very strong-willed person, pivotal, he cannot be intimidated."

       Mr. Zelensky said he didn’t know who was behind the attack but promised a “strong response." He said he would fly back to Kyiv after he addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York later on Wednesday. His speech is expected to focus on Russia’s support for separatists in East Ukraine, a war that has continued for more than seven years and claimed over 14,000 lives, according to political observers.

       “The perpetrator of the assassination attempt, as well as the those involved and their accomplices, won’t escape punishment," Mr. Zelensky’s press secretary Sergii Nykyforov wrote on Facebook.

       The apparent attempt to murder a close aide of Mr. Zelensky increases pressure on the politician. His popularity has declined since winning a landslide election victory in 2019 on a platform to combat corruption and poverty. Kyiv has been besieged by Moscow’s continued efforts to exert military and economic pressure in an effort to deter the country from forging closer ties with the West.

       Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Mr. Zelensky’s chief of staff, told the Interfax Ukraine news agency that the attack was likely pushback against the Ukrainian president’s policy to limit the influence of oligarchs on society.

       “This policy aims to palpably reduce the traditional influence of [oligarchs] on social processes and to destroy the political and financial groups that openly serve our foreign opponents," he said.

       Mr. Nykyforov said that the process of breaking the control of the oligarchs would continue despite the assassination attempt.

       The attack took place near the village of Lisnyky, some 15 miles south of Kyiv, officials said. “Unidentified individuals fired about 10 shots from a 7.62 caliber automatic weapon," Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova wrote on Facebook.

       Mr. Shefir, 57, was born in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, which is also Mr. Zelensky’s hometown. He co-founded a production company with the Ukrainian leader and others and produced a television show called “Servant of the People," a comedy where Mr. Zelensky is portrayed as a schoolteacher who becomes president.

       In 2019, Mr. Zelensky was elected as his country’s president by a wide margin. His party, Servant of the People, currently has the most lawmakers in Parliament.

       This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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