New Delhi: Russia has accused Ukraine of attempting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin in an overnight “drone strike” at his official residence in the early hours of Wednesday. While the claims have yet to be confirmed, the Kremlin has said that Putin was not injured, nor were any government buildings damaged in the alleged assassination attempt which it has termed a ‘terrorist attack’ on Russian soil.
Moscow has also warned that it ‘reserves the right to take countermeasures wherever and whenever it deems appropriate’. Russia and Ukraine are currently engaged in a war set off by the Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022.
“We view these actions as a planned terrorist attack and an assassination attempt targeting the President, carried out ahead of Victory Day and the May 9 Parade, where foreign guests are expected to be present, among others,” read a statement issued by the Kremlin.
Russia claimed that unmanned aerial vehicles were used in the alleged assassination attempt which its military ‘disabled using radar systems’. It added that the drones “crashed in the Kremlin grounds, scattering fragments without causing any casualties or damage”.
An unverified video doing the rounds on social media shows smoke emanating from the Kremlin after what looks like a drone crashes into the dome atop one of the buildings.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is currently visiting Finland, denied the claims made by Kremlin and told reporters that Kyiv had not attacked Putin or Moscow and was instead fighting on its own territory.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, too refuted the claims and said that “Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation”. Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, alleged that the drone attack was “launched by Russian partisans from Moscow”.
The incident comes days before the Victory Day Parade, held at Moscow’s Red Square on 9 May each year to mark the erstwhile Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The Victory Day Parade is a highly symbolic annual demonstration of Russian military might.
While the parade has been cancelled in many parts of the country due to fear of attacks by Ukraine, the Russian government has clarified that the developments will in no way affect the parade to be held in Moscow.
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Drone strike against Putin launched from near Moscow?
Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reportedly said that the Russian president was not in his official residence at the time of the alleged drone strike, adding that he spent the day at his Novo-Ogaryovo estate located outside Moscow. According to local media reports, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reacted to the alleged assassination attempt by imposing an immediate ban on unauthorised drone flights in the Russian capital.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of The Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) — a Moscow-based defence think tank — told the Financial Times that drones used in the alleged attack could have been purchased commercially and outfitted with explosives.
Pukhon suggested that the Ukrainian group he claimed was behind the attack could have been working underground in Russia and might have launched the drones from somewhere near Moscow.
The small number of drones used indicates a partisan effort rather than a broader attack, he opined.
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US cannot confirm the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine targeted Russian President Putin. “We take anything coming from the Kremlin with a large shaker of salt,” Blinken said.
Mick Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, told the BBC that even if the claims were true, the incident is “unlikely” to be an assassination attempt as Kyiv tracks Putin’s movements closely and he was not in Moscow at the time.
“This may have been to show the Russian people that they can be hit anywhere and that the war they started in Ukraine may eventually come home to Russia, even the capital,” he added. Mulroy also hinted that Russia may have fabricated the strike to use it as a pretext to target President Zelenskyy, which is “something they have tried to do in the past”.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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