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After a pair of explosions atop the Kremlin early Wednesday, Russia accused Ukraine of trying to assassinate President Vladimir V. Putin in a drone strike, but Kyiv denied any involvement in the incident that could raise the stakes already high in Europe’s biggest conflict since the World War. War II.
Video footage verified by The New York Times showed two drones exploding over the Kremlin 15 minutes apart, the first just before 2:30 a.m. Russia called a failed “attempt on the president’s life” by a failed Ukrainian government. by Russia’s “electronic warfare system”, but did not publish evidence of the Ukrainian link.
The Ukrainian government insists that Russia has staged the incident to distract attention from a possible retaliatory attack by Ukraine and possibly justify an escalation by Moscow. A drone attack on the most symbolic heart of Russian power would be a powerful move by Kyiv, with the potential for serious consequences.
There were no reports of serious damage, and the Russian government said that at the time of the daytime incident, Mr. Putin was not in the Kremlin, where he is not expected to spend many nights.
It is unclear from the video whether the object blew up on its own or was destroyed by Russian forces.
On Wednesday, US intelligence agencies were still trying to determine what happened, according to two American officials briefed on the situation. “We just don’t know,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at a public event in The Washington Post, adding, “I’ll take anything that comes out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt.”
American officials have in the past voiced concern that Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil, can provoke Moscow without having a direct effect on the battlefield – one reason Washington has withheld from Ukrainian weapons that can be used for deep attacks into Russia. But on Wednesday Mr Blinken said of the attack, “This is a decision that Ukraine has to make on how to defend itself.”
Whatever the drones’ provenance, it is clear that the Kremlin has made an unusual choice intentionally to publicize the incident – Mr. Putin’s press service issued a rare, five-paragraph statement. The government has said little publicly about the attacks seen earlier in Russia, and until the Kremlin’s statement, reports on social media of the sound of explosions in central Moscow early Wednesday had not attracted much attention.
Whoever is responsible, the explosion in the Kremlin could be a pretext for Mr. Putin to escalate the war in several ways, such as attacking key government buildings in Kyiv and trying to overthrow the Ukrainian government. He and other Kremlin officials have repeatedly hinted at the possibility of using nuclear weapons, and Russia hawks have called for more conscription to swell the ranks of the military.
“We will demand the use of weapons capable of ending and destroying the terrorist regime of Kiev,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the lower house of the Russian Parliament. A Kremlin statement said Russia reserves the right to “take retaliatory measures where and when appropriate.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, suggested in a statement to The New York Times that Russia would use the incident to justify “large-scale terrorist provocations” against Ukraine in the coming days.
If the drone incident was indeed a deliberate attack, its ability to penetrate central Moscow would represent the latest embarrassing failure by Russia’s already struggling military during a 14-month war.
The blasts in Moscow come as Kyiv prepares tens of thousands of soldiers for a counter-offensive to retake Russian-held territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and ramps up attacks behind front lines aimed at destroying Russian forces.
Explosions hit targets in and near Russian-held Crimea overnight, including a border guard post and a fuel depot. Although Ukraine has not claimed responsibility, the spokesman for military intelligence, Andriy Chernyak, said in a statement, “Of course, the enemy must be cut off from Crimea.” For the second time this week, explosions have damaged trains in Ukraine’s neighboring Bryansk region.
Russia has launched an offensive in and around the city of Kherson, recaptured by Ukrainian forces last fall, where officials say 21 people were killed. Officials imposed a 58-hour curfew there, starting Friday night.
Ukraine has generally maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity about what role it played in the attacks on Russia, although Ukrainian officials have privately admitted to carrying out the bombing that destroyed the Kerch Strait bridge, a vital supply route to Crimea, in October, and the attack on a Russian air base in December using drones Soviet era, jet-powered.
Last August, a car bomb outside Moscow killed Daria Dugina, a pro-war commentator and daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent Russian ultranationalist ideologue, who was believed to be the target of the attack. US intelligence agencies concluded that part of the Ukrainian government ordered the attack, which Kyiv denied.
In this case, Mr. Zelensky immediately denied responsibility. “We are not attacking Putin or Moscow,” he told Nordic broadcaster TV2 during a visit to Finland. “We are fighting on our territory. We are defending our villages and cities. We do not have enough weapons for this. Talking to Mr. Putin, he added, will be left to the international war crimes tribunal.
At a press conference with Nordic leaders, Mr Zelensky said that because Russia had “no victories to report” Mr Putin had to “make some unexpected moves like a surprise drone strike” to bolster Russia’s resolve.
By trumpeting the attack instead of denying it, Russian officials were admitting “the lack of air defense, their vulnerability, weakness and helplessness,” Leonid Volkov, fellow exile of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, wrote in a post on social media. . “It means that they find some pluses in this and, evaluating, decide that the pluses will be able to outweigh the minuses.”
The “plus” may be to galvanize Russia into more fervently backing the war effort, or presage a new escalation, Mr. Volkov wrote.
Mr Putin is scheduled to lead a huge military parade in Red Square near the Kremlin next Tuesday, on Russia’s main patriotic holiday, the May 9 celebration of the Soviet Union’s World War II victory over Nazi Germany.
The Kremlin’s sprawling red fortress contains several buildings, including the yellow-domed Senate Palace, which was seen in video footage showing the drone exploding. Inside the palace is the official residence of the president and his headquarters.
Drones have been banned from flying over the Kremlin and surrounding areas in recent years, and security officers have deployed special devices to shoot down drones in the vicinity and have sometimes closed public access to areas close to the complex.
But it is unclear how long Mr. Putin will stay at the Kremlin, which appears to be used more for ceremonial events than as a practical workplace or home. In March, he told reporters in Moscow that “I have an apartment here, where I have been spending a lot of time lately, working, spending the night” – a rare occurrence when discussing his living arrangements in public .
The government also goes to great lengths to disguise its location.
The Russian president has established similar offices in several locations, all furnished and decorated in detail, including matching desks and wall hangings, according to Gleb Karakulov, a former captain in the protective service who defected last year. Official reports sometimes portray him as being in one place when he is in another, Mr. Karakulov told the London-based opposition news outlet Center Dossier.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that at the time of Wednesday’s explosion Mr. Putin was at a compound in the elite suburb of Novo-Ogaryovo, on the banks of the Moscow River. Russian news media reports suggest that, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, he has spent much of his time there or in other outposts northeast of Moscow, near Lake Valdai.
Mr Peskov declined to say when the president would return to the Kremlin, telling the state news agency, “We will tell you at the right time.”
This reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar, Marc Santora, Riley Mellen, Edward Wong, Johanna Lemola, Courtney Brooks, Ivan Nechepurenko and Matthew Mpoke Bigg.
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