DRONE ATTACK ON THE KREMLIN, BUT PRIGOZHIN COULD BE A GREATER DANGER

On Wednesday, Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking the Kremlin with drones in an attempt to kill President Putin, the most serious allegation that Russia has levelled at Kyiv since it started the invasion more than fourteen months ago. “Two uncrewed aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin,” said the statement, before continuing, “as a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the devices were put out of action.” Social media was flooded with videos showing a flying object approaching the dome of the Kremlin Senate building overlooking Red Square and exploding in an intense burst of light just before reaching it. Fragments of the drones were reported to have been scattered over the territory of the Kremlin complex, but according to a spokesman, there were no casualties or material damage. Next Tuesday, the Kremlin plans to hold the annual Victory Parade in Red Square.
In the past, when Ukraine has probably been the cause of incidents on Russian soil, such as gas explosions, train derailments, or the attack on the Kerch Bridge to Crimea, Kyiv has refrained from denying responsibility, preferring to remain ambiguous and instead claiming events as “an act of God.” On this occasion, however, it quickly denied any involvement in the alleged strike. “As President Zelensky has stated on numerous occasions before, Ukraine uses all means at its disposal to free its own territory, not to attack others,” the Ukrainian presidential spokesman, Sergiy Nykyforov, announced after the drone incident. “First of all, it absolutely does not solve any military goals,” said Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podalyak. “It’s very unhelpful in the context of preparing for our offensive actions, and it definitely does not change anything on the battlefield,” he said. “This would allow Russia to justify mass strikes on Ukrainian cities, civilians, and infrastructure facilities. Why would we want to do that? What’s the logic?” He has a point.
A cloud of questions hangs over this incident.
First of all, why did the announcement from the Kremlin come more than 12 hours after the claimed incident? Despite Moscow’s clampdown on the media and criticism of the war in Ukraine, there is still plenty of chatter, but there were no reports of any explosion before the late announcement from the Kremlin. Why? Also, videos of the supposed drone attack didn’t appear until after the announcement, and they have yet to be verified. Something smells!
Experts are sceptical that Ukraine would be brazen enough to try to kill Putin in the Russian capital. “The idea that this was an assassination attempt is absolutely ludicrous,” said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Centre for European Policy Analysis in Washington DC. “The Kremlin is a bunker, and this looked like a makeshift drone that could cause only makeshift damage.” Speaking on the BBC on Thursday, Professor Michael Clarke, Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute London, said, “I would be truly astonished if yesterday’s drone attack on the Kremlin was down to Kyiv as it would be a monumentally stupid thing for them to do – and the quickest way for them to lose the war. If Ukraine is seen to conduct a strategically significant attack inside Russia, then it will lose Western support, and if it loses Western support, it loses the war. I don’t believe they are that stupid.”
There is some speculation that the drone attack could have been a “false flag” incident. A false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it, and here Russia has plenty of form. The most famous recent case happened in 1999 when four tower blocks on the edge of Moscow were blown up, supposedly by Chechen separatists, killing more than 300 people. This led to a bloody Second Chechen War which propelled an unknown Vladimir Putin to Russia’s presidency. Suggestions after the event that it was carried out by the Kremlin were dismissed as unbelievable. But further investigations, which resulted in the suspicious deaths of several investigative journalists, revealed that Russia’s security service, the FSB, almost certainly carried out the bombing in order to raise public anger against the Chechens. This, in turn, allowed Putin to portray the image of a strongman, in contrast to his weak, drunken predecessor.
Commentator Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter who has fled the country, raised doubts about a false flag: “If enemy drones reach the Kremlin, it means that any other object on the territory of the European part of Russia is generally defenceless,” he said. “Therefore, I do not believe that this was a provocation conceived by the Kremlin in order to influence public opinion.”
There are, of course, any number of opposition groups in Russia who could have carried out the attack, especially if it was done using a simple, short-range device. Social anger is rising over waves of conscription that are decimating the youth sector of minority groups in far-flung regions but do not seem to affect Moscow or St Petersburg. In this case, the intelligence services would have every incentive to blame Kyiv because the only thing worse for them than failing to stop a hit from a Ukrainian commando team would be an assassination attempt by Russians right under their noses.
For President Putin, however, the announcement of Ukrainian drones reaching the Kremlin could be a justification for a brutal escalation of attacks on Ukraine. A terrorist attack on the capital would be a pretext for the Russians to warn the world that this time they really are going to take the gloves off. Podalyak told the BBC that the incident indicated Russia could be “preparing a large-scale provocation” in Ukraine, a chilling possibility considering that the Russian campaign plan to date already consists of indiscriminate war crimes. Russian officials repeatedly assert that the military only goes after military targets, but the world knows that thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians have been murdered by Russian missiles.
Former president and current deputy chair of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, was quick to announce that “after today’s terrorist act, no variant remains other than the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique.” The hardline chairman of the powerful lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, compared the Ukrainian government with the terrorist Islamic State and said he will demand “the use of weapons capable of destroying it.”
In a further twist, on Thursday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, without providing evidence, said Ukraine had acted on US orders to carry out the drone attack. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Peskov was “just lying” and that the US neither encouraged nor enabled Ukraine to attack outside its borders.
While the war of words over the drone attack continued, a sudden and dramatic announcement came from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner group mercenary force. On Friday, Prigozhin said that next Wednesday his forces would leave Bakhmut, the Ukrainian city they have been trying to capture since last summer, insisting that Russia’s defence chiefs insert regular forces in their place. In a video showing him standing in a field of Russian corpses, Prigozhin yelled and ranted, “we have a 70 percent shortage of ammunition – Shoigu, Gerasimov, where is the f ammunition?” In another video issued later, he accused Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Gerasimov of being responsible for “tens of thousands of Wagner dead and injured” and said he would hold them to account.
This is clearly an attempt to pin the blame for Russia’s appalling performance in Ukraine on Shoigu and Gerasimov, which will only reignite the simmering feud between the owner of Wagner and Russian establishment forces. Prigozhin and Shoigu are playing a zero-sum game in which there cannot be two winners. Someone will have to answer for the mountain of Russian corpses, and the moment for that is approaching as Kyiv launches its long-anticipated spring offensive. Nerves will be jangling in the Kremlin – far louder than when the drones landed.