Ukraine denies drone attack on Kremlin raising questions about Russian false flag attack

Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday of orchestrating a drone attack that caused an explosion over the Kremlin, claiming that it was a failed attempt to kill President Vladimir Putin, and raising further questions whether the incident was a false flag attack. 

False flag attacks are intelligence operations designed to stage a military or terrorist strike against one's own country as a way to blame an opponent and create support in the international community, or justify retaliation. 

Russia said the drones were disabled by its “electronic warfare systems,” which caused their explosions at around 2:30 a.m. Moscow time. The Kremlin claims that the attack was planned out by the Ukrainian government as “a planned terrorist attack and an attempt on the life of the president,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Footage of a drone exploding above the Kremlin:

Russia accesses Ukraine of attempting to assassinate President Putin.

Two drones were reportedly shot down. pic.twitter.com/gSqAUd1RDi

— Global: Military-Info (@Global_Mil_Info) May 3, 2023

"The Kremlin has assessed these actions as a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade," reported RIA news agency, trying the timing of the attack to the Victory Day parade that will be held next week. Russia has not yet released evidence showing that Ukraine was behind the explosions. 

Kyiv, on the other hand, denies any involvement in the attack. Instead, the Ukrainian government claims that Russia manufactured the incident to distract the world from Kyiv’s counteroffensive. 

Kyiv is getting thousands of soldiers ready to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces in its territory. It is expected to be the largest counteroffensive launched by Ukraine since the war broke out after Russia invaded its neighboring country in February of 2022. 

“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told TV2 during a visit to Finland. “We fight on our territory. We’re defending our villages and cities. We don’t have enough weapons for these.”

According to experts, if what Russia claims about the attack is true, it raises questions about how effectively the Kremlin and President Putin are protected, as well as the effectiveness of the country’s air defenses. 

However, many are suspicious since Putin, a former KGB colonel is known in the intelligence community for orchestrating false flag operations. 

Russia was exposed for such an attack in 1999 when Putin's Federal Security Bureau (FSB) was responsible for the Moscow Apartment Bombings, a series of explosions that killed hundreds of Russians.

The bombings were erroneously blamed on Chechen rebels as a means of justifying the Second Chechen War, but FSB whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko exposed the bombings as a false flag attack in his book, "Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within."

The former Russian agent said the incident was orchestrated by the FSB to distract the public while Putin took power and abdicated President Boris Yeltsin into obscurity. 

Litvinenko was later poisoned in London in an Kremlin sponsored assassination, but his allegations were later reinforced by investigative journalist and Russia scholar David Satter in his book, "The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep," and Guardian correspondent Luke Harding, both of whom were later expelled by Putin's Russian Federation. 

On Wednesday, Russian air strikes in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson killed 21 people after the shelling hit "a railway station and a crossing, a house, a hardware store, a grocery supermarket, and a gas station."