It didn’t seem a credible attempt on Putin’s life, with video showing a flying object and a small fire on the roof of the Senate Palace, where Putin’s office is. Another drone exploded. There were people nearby but the Russian Government said Putin wasn’t in the Kremlin.
Expert on security and Russian politics Mark Galeotti tweeted that: “[Putin] notoriously rarely goes to the Kremlin, let alone stays there overnight, and there were no scheduled early morning meetings”.
One odd aspect is that Moscow is a heavily defended capital city with surface-to-air intercept missiles and electronic jamming devices, yet up to two aerial weapons were able to hover through.
That spurred suspicions that it could be a staged, “false-flag” pretext to hit Ukraine. Russia’s first response was to send drones to strike Kyiv later in the day.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War speculated that the aim could have been to shock the “domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilisation” - in other words another wave of conscription.
Moscow has reportedly used the tactic of a manufactured excuse to strike before. Bombings in Russia during 1999, which resulted in an escalation of the Chechnya conflict, were blamed on Russian intelligence operatives.
There was also a report this week that specialist Russian ships were in the area in the run-up to the blasts on the Russian-built Nord Stream pipelines - used to send gas from the country to Europe - last year. Moscow has blamed the US and its allies.
One argument against the staged attack theory is that drones getting through Russia’s defences and taking in a bird’s eye view of the Kremlin makes the regime look stunningly weak.
Ukraine has been putting a lot of work into its use of drones during the war. Galeotti tweeted that “if we presume it was a Ukrainian attack, consider it a performative strike, a demonstration of capability and a declaration of intent: ‘don’t think Moscow is safe’.”
While the war has been predominantly conducted on Ukrainian territory, including Russian-occupied areas, there have been shadowy attacks inside Russia, including the bombing deaths of two prominent supporters of the war. It appears there are some domestic opponents of Putin at work, alongside Ukraine’s efforts.
Typically the targets are militarily strategic such as fuel depots, airbases and airfields. The BBC says there have been at least 20 such attacks this year. On Thursday, for instance, a drone hit an oil refinery in southern Russia.
Kyiv does not confirm direct responsibility for such attacks but applauds them.
However, on the Kremlin incident, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy bluntly said: “We don’t attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We are defending our villages and cities.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy adviser, said: “It would allow Russia to justify massive strikes on Ukrainian cities, on the civilian population, on infrastructure facilities. Why do we need this?”
That’s the key point: Whoever was responsible, the end result is the Kremlin is arguing that it is justified in hitting Ukraine harder, just before its annual May 9 Victory Day Parade.
Putin has previously used barrages of cruise missiles on Ukraine to make a particularly harsh point, but what if something worse is in the wind? Incidents of sabotage to economically damage Europe are possible. And Russian troops still maintain control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Putin needs to motivate Russian public opinion behind the war at a turning point with Ukraine’s territorial push set to begin.
