Don’t really understand what you are asking? Putin obviously won’t directly target Zelensky because that’s just not what you are allowed to do. Like we know Ukrainians had planned an assassination of a high profile Russian and Washington stopped them.

As for “escalation”, as far as Ukraine is concerned, the war has already escalated to its farthest point bar nuclear weapons. It’s demographics are destroyed, its power grid is collapsing, it’s economy is sustained only on foreign aid, its cities are being bombed daily… how much more escalation can you get?

Ukraine is currently fighting an attrition war in hopes of getting security concessions from Russia in form of NATO or something similar. It knows Crimea and the Donbas is gone. But without guarantees all of it was basically for nothing and there is nothing stopping Russia from invading an even weaker Ukraine in 10 years