2023-05-03 15:33:18
Did Ukraine try to hit the Kremlin with military drones or is this ‘Russian propaganda’? Russia said, this Wednesday shortly after 2 p.m. in a statement sent to the Russian agency Ria Novosti, having “shot down” on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday “two Ukrainian drones which were trying to attack the Kremlin”. The two machines would have been shot down “thanks to the use of radar systems” of the Russian army, it is specified.
“We see these actions as an attempted terrorist act and an attempt on the life of the president” Vladimir Putin, added the Kremlin, specifying that the latter had not been injured. Ukraine “has nothing to do” with the drone attack on the Kremlin, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a message to reporters.
In the process, the mayor of Moscow banned drone flights over the Russian capital, unless authorized by the government. Sergei Sobyanin said that drone flights would be prohibited unless special permission was obtained from “governmental authorities”. According to the city councilor, this ban aims to prevent theft of unauthorized drones which can “hinder the work of law enforcement”.
Has Ukraine ever used military drones in Russia?
According to the Russian authorities, it would be only the third time since the start of the conflict that the Moscow region has been “hit” by Ukrainian drones. Thus on April 24, a “Ukrainian” drone crashed about fifty kilometers from Moscow, without causing any casualties or damage, according to the Russian authorities. But these “attacks” have never been claimed by kyiv. Certainty on the other hand, the Ukrainian army has indeed launched several drone attacks on other Russian regions, sometimes very far from the Ukrainian border. The latest, last weekend in Sebastopol, headquarters of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
This drone attack caused a gigantic fire in an oil depot. The spectacular operation would not have claimed any victims, however. Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the raid, but military intelligence has suggested it was in retaliation after strikes in Uman, in the center-west of the country, left 23 dead.
Andriy Yousov, of the intelligence services of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, had assured that it was “a punishment from God, in particular for the civilians killed in Uman”. He advised residents of Crimea “in the near future to avoid being near military installations and facilities supplying the army of the aggressor”. A signature more than assumed.
“On Russian territory there have already been attacks by drones, of several types, such as the modernized Tupolev suicide models at the Russian Engels-2 airbase more than 600 km from the border, but also missiles. Crimea has been hit more than 80 times since the start of the conflict, so it’s not surprising in itself, ”confirms Xavier Tytelman, consultant specialist in armaments, to Parisian. “The Russian anti-aircraft defense system is a sieve when it was – from my point of view – the most modern and the most efficient before this conflict”, notes the Air and Cosmos specialist.
What scenario for this “attack”?
“There, difficult to say that a drone crossed the entire western part of the country to hit the most defended and most symbolic area of Russia”, explains skeptical Xavier Tytelman who evokes a “highly improbable attack”. The expert leans rather for a “false flag” operation that the belligerents sometimes use to justify an invasion or a counter-attack afterwards.
A pretext sought by the Kremlin for another objective, while Ukraine has trumpeted that it was ready for a major counter-offensive. “We will see in the next few days if the Kremlin is targeting the Ukrainian presidency or trying to kill Zelensky,” he analyzes almost ironically.
“Such statements staged by Russia should only be seen as an attempt to prepare a context” that could serve as a pretext “in view of a large-scale terrorist attack in Ukraine”, also declared Volodymyr’s adviser Zelensky, Mykhailo Podoliak.
“It is not with this type of drone that we blow up the Kremlin. The little that we see on the visible images proves that there were not 30 kg of explosives to cause significant damage to such a building”. The specialist in air armament evokes a possible possibility of a more local attack by opponents of the regime, following the example of what had been done by Belarusian resistance fighters against a Russian spy plane at the very beginning of the conflict. But not sure there either. “We will wait to see the debris of drones to have a more precise opinion on the reality of this attack” concludes the expert.
#Russia #Kremlin #targeted #drone #attack #Ukraine #Moscow #accusations