On Thursday night, another drone fell over Russian territory: In the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, it set fire to a fuel storage facility, according to Russian authorities. As always with such incidents, the military and government in Ukraine have neither directly claimed responsibility for the act nor denied that it was a Ukrainian attack on the supplies of Russian troops in Ukraine.
Reinhard Veser
Editor in politics.
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It is therefore striking that clear denials soon came from the Ukrainian leadership after Russia on Wednesday made the claim that Ukraine had tried to carry out a "terrorist attack" on the Russian president's residence in the Moscow Kremlin with two drones. "We are not attacking either Putin or Moscow," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during his visit to Finland.
Putin's life was not in danger
His adviser Mykhailo Podolyak pointed out that such an attack would not be a helpful contribution to the preparation of the expected counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On Wednesday, he speculated that the attack could be the work of "local resistance forces." On Thursday, Podolyak wrote on Twitter that the incident was obviously a staging by the Kremlin.
This assessment was also shared by Western observers such as the American think tank Institute for the Study of War the day after the event. It is difficult to explain how two drones managed to overcome air defenses in what is probably Russia's best-secured area. It is not only in the vicinity of the Russian capital that air defence has been massively strengthened in recent months.
Air defense systems have also been set up in Moscow itself, for example on the roof of the Ministry of Defense, which is located not far from the Kremlin. In addition, the official Russian account does not sound plausible in view of the apparently low explosive power of the drones that the attack was aimed at the life of Vladimir Putin – who, according to official figures, was not in the Kremlin at the time of the event.
Commentators warn against extreme steps
In the Russian exile medium "Meduza", however, the political scientist Kirill Shamiev doubted the sense of such a staging: it would hardly contribute to the mobilization of Russian society in the interests of the rulers. Rather, the hit in the heart of Russian state power raises doubts about its ability to defend the country. In the Telegram channels of radical nationalist Russian war supporters, there was indeed a lot of talk on Wednesday and Thursday about a "humiliation" of Russia by the incident.
Many contributions called for radical countermeasures, including nuclear strikes. There were also some similar statements from the Russian leadership, such as Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin or former President Dmitry Medvedev, who called for the "physical elimination of Zelensky". A number of pro-regime commentators, however, warned that radical reactions would be "pointless at best, harmful at worst," according to the state agency Ria Novosti: the use of weapons of mass destruction will lead to a real isolation of Russia.
While Russian propaganda raved about the "terrorist regime in Kiev", the shelling of civilian targets in Ukrainian cities by Russian forces continued. Thus, on Wednesday, in the Kherson region, at least 23 civilians were killed and 46 injured in shelling of railway stations, supermarkets, gas stations and residential areas, according to the authorities.