Russia claimed on Wednesday, May 2, to have shot down two Ukrainian drones which targeted the Kremlin in Moscow, denouncing an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin. This accusation was immediately rejected by kyiv.
“We didn’t attack [Vladimir] Putin,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a surprise trip to Finland. “We are defending our villages and our cities,” he added, when, according to Kiev, Russian strikes left eighteen dead in the Kherson region (southern Ukraine). The United States, allies of kyiv, for their part said they were taking the Kremlin’s accusations with “great caution”.
“Last night, the Kiev regime tried to hit the Kremlin” with two drones that were “disabled” by electronic warfare systems, the Russian presidency said at midday. She denounced “an attempted terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the President”, adding that “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it deems appropriate”.
A senior Russian official, Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament Vyacheslav Volodin, called for a response using “weapons capable of stopping and destroying” the Ukrainian leadership. Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev went further: “After today’s terrorist attack, there is no other solution left than the physical elimination of [Volodymyr] Zelensky and his clique”, said- he writes on Telegram, current number two of the Russian Security Council and accustomed to vitriolic statements.
kyiv denies any attack on Russian territory
Ukraine, which regularly denies attacks on Russian territory attributed to it, has again denied any involvement. “We did not attack Putin (…). We are fighting on our territory, we are defending our villages and towns,” Zelensky insisted at a press conference in Helsinki.
One of the Ukrainian president’s advisers, Mykhailo Podoliak, accused Moscow of “staged” to justify “a major terrorist attack in Ukraine”.
The attempted attack made public by the Kremlin came days before May 9 celebrations marking the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. Several military parades were canceled across Russia due to security concerns. The Briansk region, bordering Ukraine, thus gave up the big festivities on Wednesday, after two spectacular sabotages which derailed two trains in recent days.
The Kremlin, however, said on Wednesday that the big military parade in Red Square in Moscow would take place as planned. The police device did not seem to have been reinforced on Wednesday. Onlookers strolled near Red Square, without looking worried, in front of banners celebrating May 9. Moscow City Hall on Wednesday announced a ban on drone flights over the city.
Incidents involving drones have multiplied in recent months in Russia, these machines having targeted military bases or energy infrastructures. A fuel depot thus caught fire overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in Russia, near annexed Crimea, after the “fall of a drone”, according to the official news agency TASS.
The multiplication of these actions comes at a time when kyiv claims to have completed its preparations for a major counter-offensive against Russian positions in Ukraine.
The Kherson region is often cited by analysts as one of the possible theaters of a Ukrainian counter-offensive. The regional capital, Kherson, was retaken in November by troops from kyiv, but has since been regularly bombarded by the Russians.
During his surprise trip to Helsinki, Mr. Zelensky said that “this year will be decisive (…) for Europe, for Ukraine”. In this context, the European Commission presented on Wednesday a financial instrument endowed with 500 million euros to increase the European Union’s ammunition production capacity to one million shells per year in order to replenish its arsenals and help the ‘Ukraine.
