The Russian leadership speaks of a "terrorist attack" on President Vladimir Putin by Ukraine, the Ukrainian leadership sees the event as a "provocation" by the Russian regime: What happened in Moscow on Wednesday night is interpreted differently in both countries.

Reinhard Veser

Editor in politics.

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According to a statement circulated by the Russian presidential administration on Wednesday afternoon, Ukraine is said to have tried to attack Putin's residence on the Kremlin grounds with two drones on Wednesday night. The drones were intercepted by the military and intelligence services, and no one was harmed when the debris crashed, the Kremlin said, according to the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti. Putin himself, according to his spokesman Dmitry Peskov, was not in the Kremlin at the time of the "attack".

Calls for retribution are growing

When the Russian leadership went public, the incident had already occurred almost twelve hours ago. The first news about this came from the night. In a Telegram channel of a Moscow district near the Kremlin, it was said that explosions were heard over the Kremlin at around 2:30 a.m.

To this end, videos have been published showing smoke rising above the Kremlin compound. According to the Kremlin's announcement on Wednesday afternoon, videos appeared on Telegram showing the explosion of a flying object near the dome of the Senate building and flames in its roof.

The Ukrainian leadership quickly denied any responsibility for what happened. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's spokesman told the BBC's Ukrainian service that Ukraine was concentrating its forces on "liberating its own territory, and not attacking someone else's." In the evening, Zelensky himself, who was in Helsinki for a meeting with the Nordic leaders, also said: "We are not attacking either Putin or Moscow." Ukraine is defending its own territory, and even for this it does not have enough weapons: "That's why we don't use them anywhere else."

Zelensky's adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told the Ukrainian portal "nv.ua" that the Ukrainian Armed Forces only attacked military objects of the aggressor on the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. Attacks on such objects as the Kremlin are of no help in the preparation of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Podolyak said that drones over objects of Russian energy infrastructure or the Kremlin could be the work of "domestic resistance forces." In recent days, several fuel depots near the border with Ukraine have burned in Russia. In addition, two freight trains were derailed in the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine. As a rule, Ukraine does not directly commit to such attacks on legitimate military targets on Russian territory, but Ukrainian politicians and military have repeatedly made it clear through allusions that they may have been the work of Ukrainian forces. The accumulation of acts of sabotage in Russia in recent times is associated with the imminent counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In both Russia and Ukraine, the incident in Moscow was associated with the upcoming anniversary of the end of World War II. It is celebrated in Russia on May 9 as "Victory Day". On this day, a large military parade is to be held in Moscow on Red Square in front of the Kremlin. On the video showing the explosion over the Kremlin, you can see the grandstands already set up for the parade. Last year, there were fears in Ukraine that Russian forces could attack Ukrainian cities on May 9 in particular, as Kremlin propaganda portrays the war of aggression on Ukraine as a continuation or completion of the war against Hitler's Germany.

In Russia, meanwhile, calls for retribution were raised. "We will demand the use of weapons capable of stopping and destroying the terrorist Kyiv regime," Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram. Former President Dmitry Medvedev called for the killing of Ukrainian President Zelensky. Sergei Mironov of the pseudo-opposition party "Just Russia" made a similar statement. However, he also addressed a critical question to the Russian military: How is it even possible for a drone to fly all the way to the Kremlin?