The Kremlin Drone Attack Explained – Moscow accused Kyiv of attempting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone strike on the Kremlin citadel on Wednesday. A statement from the Kremlin described how two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were aimed at the Kremlin, but that the devices were disabled before they could do any damage.
Reportedly, this is the moment when a drone hit the Kremlin. pic.twitter.com/MiUob8fSV9
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 3, 2023
“As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the devices were put out of action,” the statement reads. “We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the president’s life, carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned.”
The statement also described how fragments of the destroyed drone were found scattered across the surrounding grounds and that nobody was injured as a result of the strike.
Video footage that was shared online appears to show the moment that the drone approaches one of the domes on top of the Kremlin.
Two unidentified men – likely workers – can be seen walking on the roof of the building as the drone approaches and quickly explodes. The drone doesn’t appear to strike the building, lending credibility to Russia’s claim that the drones were destroyed before they could strike their intended target.
19FortyFive could not independently verify the authenticity of the viral video footage.
Speaking to NBC News, three U.S. officials said that the White House was given no advance warning of attempted strikes on the Kremlin by Ukraine.
Two of those officials also suggested that the claim may not be true, stating that no Ukrainian drone could get that close to the Kremlin given just how many air defense systems are in operation around the citadel.
Had the drone strike been successful, it not only could have caused the building to collapse and potentially injured the Russian president and his staff, but it would have also represented one of Russia’s biggest failures in the conflict.
Ukraine Denies Responsibility
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Ukrainian president, Sergiy Nykyforov, said that Ukraine was not responsible for the attempted strike.
“As President Zelenskyy has stated numerous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its disposal to free its own territory, not to attack others,” the Ukrainian official said.
Speaking during a trip to Finland on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that rumors of Ukraine’s attempt to assassinate the Russian president were untrue.
“We don’t attack Putin, or Moscow. We fight on our territory, we are defending our villages and cities,” the Ukrainian president told a press conference.
Zelenskyy also suggested that his army is barely equipped enough to fight on Ukrainian soil, let alone on foreign territories.
Putin Created An Excuse to Escalate?
The two U.S. officials who expressed skepticism about Russia’s claims to NBC News are not alone in their belief that there could be more to this story.
Writing for the National Review, political correspondent Jim Geraghty listed a number of reasons why the attack could be a “false flag” orchestrated by Russia.
First, Geraghty argues, nobody really benefits from the strike.
“If you’re Ukraine, and you want Russia to stop attacking and invading, do you think blowing up a part of the Kremlin and killing Putin is going to make the Russian people want to end the war? Or will it make them even more determined to continue it?” he writes.
Geraghty also notes how the Ukrainian forces almost certainly had no idea whether Putin was present in the building that was hit, and that reaching the Kremlin in the first place is extremely difficult.
While it is, of course, true that Russia may have orchestrated the attack as a false flag, it is also entirely possible that the Ukrainians conducted the strike in the hope that Putin may have been inside, or that the strike alone may be enough to make the Russians realize they are vulnerable. It is also possible that the strike was conducted by pro-Ukraine saboteurs within Russia, or by pro-Ukraine groups beyond Russia’s borders.
If Russia is behind the attempted strikes, however, it could theoretically give the Kremlin justification to expand the scope of the conflict or finally deploy nuclear weapons, as Putin has been hinting at since last year.
In response to the attack, the Speaker of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, suggested that Russia could use nuclear weapons in retaliation against what he described as “planned terrorist action.”
The Kremlin’s official statement announcing the strikes also hinted at a possible retaliation, describing how Russia “reserves the right to take countermeasures wherever and whenever it deems appropriate.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, also said on Telegram on Wednesday that the strike has left his country with no other option but to entirely eliminate the Ukrainian president and those around him.
“After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left other than the physical elimination of Zelenskyy and his clique,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.
Medvedev also compared the Ukrainian president to former German leader Adolf Hitler, stating that neither Zelenskyy is not needed for the country to sign “an instrument of unconditional surrender.”
“Hitler, as is known, did not sign it either. There will always be some substitute,” he said.
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Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
NOTE: This piece has been updated since publication.
