The drone attack, the Kremlin and the many question marks

With its 20 towers and turrets, palaces and cathedrals and striking colours, it looks like a princess’s dream covered in ice, but it is the center of Russian power: the Kremlin in Moscow. Now two Ukrainian drones would have aimed to blow up parts of this place and thus kill the Russian president. At least that’s what Russia claims.

What we know about the drone attack on the Kremlin:

The incident

The first videos of the incident were published on Russia’s Telegram channels around 3 a.m. on Wednesday.

They spread like wildfire and show a somewhat blurry video recording of a drone that allegedly crashed into a flagpole on the roof of the Senate Palace on the Kremlin grounds on the night from Tuesday to Wednesday and then exploded. Further videos showed another drone, but the explosion could not be seen. The Senate Palace is the working residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the Russian government, the explosion did not damage the symbolic heart of Russia. Despite this, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin imposed a ban on drones throughout the capital.

The recordings could not be independently verified.

Russia

The Kremlin confirmed the information from the Telegram bloggers in the afternoon (local time). In the press release, Russia accuses Ukraine of being responsible for the alleged attack in the first sentence:

Russia writes that the drone attack is considered a planned and targeted terrorist attack “on the president’s life”. However, Putin was not injured – on the contrary: “He was able to continue working.” Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time of the attack, but at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo.

If the drone was really controlled by the Ukrainian side, then it would be doubtful whether the drone strike was a targeted assassination attempt on Putin. Because Putin “notoriously rarely goes to the Kremlin” and staying there overnight makes absolutely no sense to the president, writes political scientist, Russia specialist and security analyst Mark Galeotti on Twitter.

At the end of the letter it says that the Russian side reserves the right “To take revenge where and when she sees fit.”

Neither the video nor the Russian report reveals whether the drone in the video was shot down by Moscow’s air defenses or exploded after colliding with the flagpole.

Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine’s only concern was to defend its own cities and towns against a Russian invasion. He said:

It wouldn’t be the first time Russia has accused Ukraine of using drones to attack Russian targets, though Ukraine has consistently denied those allegations. The American non-governmental organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) has recorded a total of 602 such incidents directly on the Ukrainian border since April 21, 2022. Officially, the army has combat drones with a maximum range of about 300 kilometers, which is not enough to reach Moscow.

However, independent experts such as Markus Galeotti see strong evidence that Ukraine now possesses long-range drones. And such drones would be found closer and closer to Moscow. According to reports, a drone appeared near the town of Kolomna, about 100 km southeast of the town, only in February. Last month, a drone crashed about 30 km east of Moscow.

However, an attack on the Kremlin – in the middle of Moscow, one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world – would be the boldest demonstration of Ukrainian influence on Russian soil yet – true to the motto:

A symbolic and political action – and not an assassination attempt on the Russian president.

This threat is also said to have been made shortly before 9 May. May 9 is celebrated in Russia as “Victory Day” over Nazi Germany and is usually marked with parades and memorial marches for dead soldiers. This year’s program has already been compressed for security reasons.

The «false flag» operation

The claim is already buzzing that the drones over the Kremlin are a staged Moscow “false flag” operation. To incite the Russian people even more against Ukraine and provide a pretext for further barbarism in Ukraine, as the Guardian writes.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, one of Zelenskyy’s advisers, also claimed to the BBC that Kiev had nothing to do with it. However, the video would be a sign of an impending Russian atrocity.

The renowned Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also assumes a false flag operation. It is “extremely unlikely that two drones could penetrate multiple air defense layers and explode or be shot down directly over the heart of the Kremlin. And in a way that produced spectacular images that were well captured on camera,” writes the ISW in its 3 report. May The ISW concludes that the false flag attack may have served to warrant further mobilization measures.

The Russian political scientist and former Putin speechwriter Abbas Galyamov thinks otherwise. He says no matter how you look at it: Russia is not doing well. Because the incident “first and foremost showed the weakness of Russian air defense”. That’s why he doesn’t believe in a false flag operation.

Galeotti also blows the same pipe: if the drone actually came from Ukraine, it would have exposed an embarrassing security shortcoming in Russia. He even sees the possibility that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu will soon reach his last hour. Analogous to the case when in 1987 the German Mathias Rust landed in a small plane on the Great Moskva Bridge right next to the Kremlin – and as a result the highest military ranks in Russia were purged.