Alleged Putin ‘assassination’ attempt reflects rising nerves on both sides

The Kremlin on Wednesday accused Ukraine of sending a pair of drones into the heart of Moscow in a plot to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin, but officials in Kyiv insisted they had nothing to do with it. It is a sign that nerves on both sides are fraying ahead of renewed clashes on the battlefield.

Video showed some kind of craft seeming to approach the familiar silhouette of the Russian seat of power before detonating in a loud flash over the roof of the Russian Senate building. Russian officials said Mr. Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time, but at least one Putin aide suggested that a similar strike against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was put on the table.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelenskyy, said it was more likely that Russia was behind the drone incident as a pretext for launching large-scale attacks on Ukrainian cities to escalate its war, now in its second year.

“Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Podolyak said on social media. “This does not solve any military issue, but it gives [Russia] grounds to justify its attacks on civilians.”

Mr. Zelenskyy, on a visit to new NATO member Finland, said the assassination charge was a sign of desperation by Mr. Putin as his invasion increasingly bogs down and signs of a new Ukrainian offensive mount.

“Russia has no victories,” Mr. Zelenskyy told reporters in Helsinki. “He cannot motivate his society, his state. On the battlefield, the second army of the world lost. They cannot occupy Ukraine. Now he needs to somehow motivate his people to move forward.”

The murky incident could raise unease in Washington and Western European capitals, which have urged restraint on Kyiv in taking the fight to Russia, especially when Western arms or intelligence are part of the operation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. had no information on an assassination attempt but Russia’s claims should be taken “with a very large shaker of salt.”

Braced for an attack

Russian forces are braced for a promised Ukrainian spring counteroffensive expected to kick off at any time. Strikes on sites in Russian-controlled Crimea and inside Russia have ramped up tensions on both sides. Many Russian cities have canceled their annual May 9 Victory Day celebrations of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II for fear that the public events would be targets for Ukrainian attacks.

Russian officials said the drones were taken out by the military and security services using advanced radar warfare systems. The explosions sent fragments scattering onto the Kremlin grounds, but no injuries or serious damage was reported, according to Mr. Putin’s office.

“We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the president,” his office said in a statement. “The Russian side reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit.”

A government spokesman told the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that Mr. Putin wasn’t in his Kremlin apartments at the time of the attack.

Standing beside Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Mr. Zelenskyy said the Russian leader’s fate should be left up to a war crimes tribunal once the fighting ends.

“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “We are defending our villages and cities. We don’t have enough weapons for this.”

Some foreign policy analysts say it’s unlikely that Ukraine was behind the drone attack in Moscow. Others argue that it fits a pattern of drone missions and other operations inside Russia widely believed to be the work of Ukrainian operatives. John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it wouldn’t be the first time Ukraine has sent drones across the border deep into Russian territory as far as Moscow.

“Ukraine is working on a variety of indigenous [drones]. It could have been one of those,” Mr. Hardie said. “It could have been something they acquired abroad [and] souped up.”

Even if the military impact was relatively minor, a drone strike on the Kremlin could be considered a psychological blow, Mr. Hardie said.

“Moscow is Russia’s most populous city and the most affluent,” he said. “It could be a ‘You’re not safe even in your own capital’ sort of thing.”

In a post on Twitter, Mark Galeotti, a Russian military and security analyst at University College London, said the attack could have been a “performative strike” by Kyiv to underscore Russia’s vulnerabilities in the war. Less certain, he said, “is whether [the attack]  shakes Russians’ nerves or angers them.”

Mr. Blinken said in an interview with The Washington Post that it was “hard to comment or speculate on this without really knowing what the facts are.” 

He said the U.S. wouldn’t dictate what steps Ukraine should take to defend itself and claw back the territory seized by Russia during the 2022 invasion or in 2014 when Moscow occupied and later annexed the Crimean Peninsula.

“These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself, how it’s going to get its territory back, [and] how it’s going to restore its territorial integrity and its sovereignty,” Mr. Blinken said.

The Kremlin was struck as Ukraine prepared for what is expected to be its long-anticipated counteroffensive against the occupying Russian forces. On Wednesday, the Pentagon detailed Ukraine’s latest security assistance package, valued at up to $300 million. It includes more ammunition for the U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), additional howitzers, more 155 mm artillery rounds, anti-tank missiles and aircraft rockets, along with demolition equipment, trucks, trailers and spare parts.

“The United States will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security assistance requirements,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

The U.S. has committed more than $35.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

Skeptical

Despite the angry Russian reaction, many were skeptical of the Kremlin’s version of events.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow with the Defense Priorities think tank, said the most plausible scenario is that the claim of a drone strike was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. A video does not clearly record the incident, and it appears to show two people climbing one of the famous Kremlin onion dome structures just before the explosions.

“They don’t seem shocked. That’s a little suspicious,” Col. Davis said. “And, you’re going to tell me a drone that small penetrated all the way to the airspace of Moscow and got all the way over the top of the Kremlin’s walls? That seems unreasonable.”

Killing Mr. Putin while he was asleep in his heavily guarded Kremlin apartments also would require extraordinarily detailed intelligence about a leader known for his obsession with security, Col. Davis said.

Mr. Hardie said he doubts Russia would stage a bogus strike on the Kremlin to inflame the public’s anger against Ukraine.

“There are probably more effective ways to do it, such as a ‘false flag’ operation that hurts civilians,” he said.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Mr. Putin, called the drone mission a “terrorist attack” and said Kyiv was responsible.

“There are no options left except for the physical elimination of Zelenskyy and his clique,” Mr. Medvedev said on his Telegram social media account.

Kyiv has used drones to great effect in the war against Russia, Mr. Hardie said. Most recently, a Ukrainian drone strike late last week set a Russian fuel storage facility ablaze in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol. It sent a cloud of black smoke into the sky over the Russian-occupied peninsula.

U.S. officials also believe elements of the Ukrainian government were behind a spectacular car bombing near Moscow in October that killed the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. Ukraine is believed to be responsible for another explosion in October that heavily damaged a bridge linking Russia to Kerch in occupied Crimea that was used to resupply the invading forces.

On Wednesday, a fuel depot in southern Russia’s Krasnodar region erupted in flames as a result of what local authorities said was another drone attack.

Retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, formerly the NATO supreme allied commander, told Politico that he personally hoped Ukraine was responsible for the drone strike on the Kremlin despite Kyiv’s denials.

“Russia enjoys sanctuary, [and] we essentially enforce it by forbidding Ukraine from using our weapons in striking Russia,” Gen. Breedlove said. “I want the Russian Federation to have to expend energy and forces in their defense of their capital.”

Asked whether Mr. Putin would be back working at his Kremlin office on Thursday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow, “We’ll let you know in due time.”

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.