The explosion of two drones over one of the Kremlin palaces has led the circle of the Russian president to openly raise the assassination of the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, or an even greater destruction of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, who has the last word in Russia, is aware of the dilemma he finds himself in: Russian ultranationalism expects a harsh response for such an insult, but an escalation would scare even its partners. The president thus finds himself in a very difficult situation: either he has no more options to offer to demonstrate his power —since Ukrainian cities have already been receiving waves of missiles for months— or his response would cross all the red lines of the international community. .
After today’s terrorist attack [por el miércoles], there are no other options except to physically eliminate Zelensky and his gang,” said Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman, former President Dmitry Medvedev. His words were retweeted this Thursday by official accounts that depend on the Russian Foreign Ministry. A Kremlin propaganda chief, Vladimir Solovyov, stated on his program, one of the most watched in the country, that nothing can save Zelensky, just as nothing saved Iranian general Qasem Soleimani from being assassinated by the United States. “We should not worry about which country it is in, or that the Netherlands [país que ha visitado Zelenski este jueves] be a member of NATO,” he stressed.
“After today’s terrorist attack, there are no other options except to physically eliminate Zelensky and his gang” – Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. https://t.co/P1INXXKFa4
— Russia in Spain (@EmbajadaRusaES) May 4, 2023
Zelensky’s life has been in danger from the very beginning of the war. as revealed The Times, hundreds of Chechen fighters tried to infiltrate Kiev at the end of February 2022 to finish off the Ukrainian leader. His failure cemented the Ukrainian resistance ever since.
These are not the only threats against Ukraine and its leader that loyalists to Putin have launched in the last few hours. “There can be no negotiations with the Zelensky regime. We will demand the use of weapons capable of stopping and destroying the terrorist regime in kyiv,” State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday. “Russia will respond in accordance with its assessments of the threat that kyiv has created for the leadership of our country,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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This morning Vladimir Solovyov says Russia should kill Zelensky while he’s in the Netherlands
“We don’t care that it’s a Nato country” pic.twitter.com/gkIyRWms1u
—Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 4, 2023
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, accused the United States of orchestrating the attack. “We know very well that the decisions about these actions, about these attacks, are not made in kyiv, but in Washington. And kyiv complies with what they tell it to do,” said the Kremlin representative.
China, Moscow’s main partner, has called for calm at the risk of further escalation. “All parties must avoid taking measures that could further worsen the situation,” said the spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, according to the Efe agency. For his part, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, says he believes Kiev’s denial and has urged Russia “not to use this alleged attack as an argument for further escalation.”
The United States, meanwhile, rejects Peskov’s accusations. “He’s just lying,” replied National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “I can assure you that the United States is not involved in this,” he added, adding cautiously: “We still don’t know what really happened.”
Washington has been trying to tie Kiev short for some time to avoid an escalation of attacks on Russian territory, until now focused on fuel depots and military bases. According to documents from the US National Security Agency to which he had access The Washington Post, kyiv “agreed, at Washington’s request, to postpone the attacks” that it planned to commit in Moscow on the occasion of the first anniversary of the war. In addition, The New York Times published in October last year that US intelligence suspected that Ukraine may be behind the murder of the daughter of Russian ultranationalist thinker Alexander Dugin.
Crossing of accusations
Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of responsibility for the attack, each with their own arguments. kyiv claims that Moscow has carried out a false flag attack (an operation carried out with the intention of holding someone else responsible and thus creating the pretext for an attack). The Kremlin has been singled out on other occasions for using this strategy. On February 18, 2022, a week before the invasion of Ukraine began, the authorities imposed by Moscow in Donetsk and Lugansk announced a mass evacuation due to an alleged Ukrainian offensive after seven years of tense truce. The explosion of a car bomb without victims in Donetsk was also recorded. The message about the evacuation had been recorded, however, on February 16, according to the metadata of the videos, that is, before the serious exchange of fire began with which Moscow justified the invasion and for which Ukraine blamed the separatists.
“We do not attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We leave that to the Court [Internacional]”, Zelensky stated emphatically this Wednesday in The Hague.
kyiv has dropped that it could have been an attack carried out by some Russian rebel movement with drones bought in some military store. One of these groups has claimed responsibility for a recent border raid.
Putin’s former adviser Sergei Markov recalled a message on Twitter from the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, on March 29, which, from his point of view, demonstrates Ukraine’s authorship. “Ukrainian swarm Mathias Rust: dozens of models, thousands of drones. Unmanned aerial devices in the service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a flight range of more than 3,000 kilometers,” Danilov wrote. He was referring to the famous German pilot who got around the Soviet anti-aircraft defenses and landed his plane in Red Square on May 28, 1987.
Regardless of who is attacking, the key is how Putin will respond. Russia launched a few waves of missiles at Ukraine after the Dugina assassination and the Crimean bridge bombing, and this past week has carried out three massive bombing raids in six days. Some ask for more. Markov has hinted that the Russian president can only react with an attack on Zelensky himself if he manages to locate him, but at the same time, he acknowledges difficulties in any response. “How would you respond to the Kremlin coup? Attack Zelensky’s residence in kyiv? It is no longer there. Hit the center of kyiv? kyiv is a Russian city. Hit the Ukrainian General Staff? The Pentagon controls everything Hit the Pentagon? It would be World War III. Attack with tactical weapons? Wouldn’t it have much of a military impact and lead to the real political isolation of Russia in the world?”
The political scientist’s approach differs from the outbursts of many Russian politicians. The former head of the Russian space agency, Dmitri Rogozin, has stated that Russia “by its military doctrine has every right to use tactical nuclear weapons” and that this would be appropriate in the face of the imminent Ukrainian offensive.
New details about the attack on the Kremlin
On the night of May 2-3, two drones exploded over the Kremlin complex. There were no casualties despite the fact that there were two people on the roof where one of the devices exploded. “From what I know from our cleaning department, two sheets of copper that line the dome have burned. Everything will be like new”, has been the assessment of the damages by Putin’s spokesman.
The images released from the security cameras show that a first drone arrived from the south of Moscow and exploded at 2:27 p.m. in the capital (1:27 in mainland Spain). The second, which came from the east of the city, exploded at the same point as the previous one at 2.43 Moscow time. In the videos it is not clear if they were shot down, as the official Russian version emphasizes.
the independent journal jellyfish has estimated that the speed of those drones was slow compared to those typically used to hit Russian military infrastructure, which reach approximately 108 to 126 kilometers per hour. The Ukrainian model that could fit is the UJ-22, capable of traveling 800 kilometers —Moscow is more than 500 from the Ukrainian border. Russian security forces claimed to have found three of these drones in the Moscow region at the end of April: two with cameras and one with half a kilo of explosives.
The other option would be to use the short-range drones that are used at the front, but this would imply launching them practically from inside Moscow.
In both cases it would be a failure of the Russian anti-aircraft systems and security forces. Almost 26 years ago, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev abruptly sacked his defense minister and his air defense chief over the Rust landing. Putin, with a war stalled for more than a year, keeps his high command in office through thick and thin.
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