Early Wednesday morning, the Kremlin was struck by two explosive-laden drones believed to have been launched by Ukraine. No one was injured, and the Russians assure us that Vladimir Putin was not in the area and is safe. However, I have it on good authority that you can’t find a pair of brown trousers for sale in Moscow at any price. The size of the impact indicates the drones were from inside Russia.

Was Putin the Target?

Russia claims this was an assassination attempt.

BREAKING: The Russian government claims Ukrainian drones tried to attack the Kremlin in Moscow overnight.

Russia has called it an assassination attempt on Pres. Vladimir Putin. Ukraine has denied any responsibility. pic.twitter.com/QTZbggIBNd

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 3, 2023

According to Russia’s mouthpieces on social media, the fact that Putin was not killed means that the attack failed.

Ukraine attempted a drone strike on the Kremlin, targeting Vladimir Putin. It failed. pic.twitter.com/4KyNh1k6bw

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 3, 2023

Wow! Ukraine attacked the Kremlin! Russia said Ukraine attacked with drones overnight in a failed bid to kill President Vladimir Putin. It claimed that two drones were used in the attack on Putin's residence in the citadel, but that the attack was foiled by electronic defences. pic.twitter.com/QwD78aNX86

— Mike (@Doranimated) May 3, 2023

Ukraine Denies Responsibility

Kiev denied responsibility for the attack and claimed that this was a provocation engineered by the Russians to justify even more terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Podolyak argues that Russia is preparing a large-scale terrorist attack on Ukraine and is looking for a pretext (he cites the detention of alleged subversives in Crimea as more proof)

Podolyak speculates that local Russian resistance forces could be behind the attack

— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) May 3, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was on a trip to Helsinki when the attack happened, a strange place to be if you’re trying to assassinate Putin. He also denies Ukrianian responsibility.

Zelensky, in Finland, denies Ukraine attacked the Kremlin.

“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. … We don’t have enough, you know, weapons for this.”

“We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to the tribunal.”pic.twitter.com/PsdtR4wUIW

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) May 3, 2023

Whodunit?

Like everything in this war, the official accounts make you think you are trapped in a carnival house of mirrors.

Calling this an assassination attempt is obvious bullsh**. No one outside Putin’s inner circle knows where he is at night. If the Ukrainians had good enough intelligence to target Putin, he has problems much bigger than a couple of quadrocopters slamming into a Kremlin dome.

On the other hand, calling it an assassination attempt is one way of diverting attention from the obvious: two drones carrying explosives hit the Kremlin. The Russians claim electronic defenses brought them down, but when you bring down things on your own facilities, one has to question which side your defensive systems are working for. Of course, this is the country that bombed one of its own cities (Well, It Looks Like Russia Accidentally Bombed Itself on Thursday and Putin’s War, Week 61. Xi Calls, Prigozhin Sounds El Degüello, and Surprise Attacks at Sevastopol, Kherson, and (Maybe) St. Petersburg).

Ukraine has hit targets deep inside Russia on several occasions. These targets have all been purely military; see The War in Ukraine Heats up as Drones Attack Russian Airbase Only 100 Miles From Moscow and Putin’s War, Week 44. Drones Strike Russian Strategic Bomber Base…Again…and Prigozhin Makes His Move. A strike directly at the Kremlin would be a marked departure from Ukraine’s modus operandi. That said, striking the Kremlin makes Russia look weak. One wonders what genius in the Kremlin could have dreamed this up because, best case, it might create a bubble of popular support for Putin that would put him at over 100% popularity in official polls.

I don’t like quoting Jonah Goldberg, but I tend to agree with this.

Also, I have to think the Ukrainians have better intel for an assassination attempt than “somewhere under the roof of the Kremlin,” particularly when he apparently wasn’t even there. It also looks like a Universal Studios show given the low-wattage pyrotechnics. https://t.co/UZmshubQOX

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) May 3, 2023

Mysteries Abound

And there is this mystery. If you look carefully at the video of the drones striking the dome, you see this on the lower left of the dome.

Two people can be seen climbing the dome at the Kremlin as the reported Ukrainian drone hits….. pic.twitter.com/sf0j9CGLlr

— Richard (@ricwe123) May 3, 2023

There is also the question of the high quality of the video coming out of Moscow.

There were two strikes on the Kremlin, 16 minutes apart – Russian media.

The first drone was spotted over the Kremlin at 2:27 a.m. Moscow time. It exploded over the Senate palace and the palace's roof was set on fire.

The second drone struck at 2:43 a.m. Its fragments fell on… pic.twitter.com/Ml4Vjryqlw

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 3, 2023

This has led to claims that this was a “false flag” attack. This Twitter thread is the best defense of that theory.

2) Kremlin gladly confirmed the attack within a few hours. They never do it, preferring to look stupid, not humiliated. Remember all the stories about “the Flagship Moskva sank because of the storm” and “it was a fire because of smoking, not a missile attack” Now it’s different/2

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) May 3, 2023

4) It’s not clear yet, why the Kremlin launched this campaign (if it had). But it’s clear:
4a) The Kremlin wants us to think it were Ukrainians;
4b) In many other cases they opted for shameless lies just not to confirm the Ukrainian attacks.
These two facts are the only facts /4

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) May 3, 2023

5) All other “facts” (including the videos themselves) are not confirmed yet and need to be seen as speculations in a best case, or even as fakes in worst case.
6) Keep minds clear, question the messages you are been served with. /END

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) May 3, 2023

In addition to the items Sergey Sumlenny highlights, there is this over-the-top reaction from the chairman of the Duma.

Vyacheslav Volodin is quick to react to the unexplained incident in Kremlin, accusing Ukraine of no less than nuclear blackmail❗️, assassinations of political and public figures❗️, undermining civilian facilities❗️, attempting to murder Putin*.

Looking forward to what Dmitry… pic.twitter.com/lXoXDCehEx

— Dmitri (@wartranslated) May 3, 2023

Occam’s Razor Becomes a Corkscrew

If the attack was related to Putin’s War in Ukraine, I think it was carried out by autonomous partisans working independently. These attacks, usually targeting recruiting stations but sometimes hitting infrastructure, are not uncommon. Two Russian trains carrying supplies for the Russian Army in Ukraine were derailed inside Russia over the weekend. The timing of the attack makes no sense from a Ukrainian strategic point of view, but an attack on the Kremlin just before Victory Day is something that might appeal to freelance partisans. Strategically, this is definitely against Ukraine’s interests. Any sugar rush gained from drones bouncing off the Kremlin is more than offset by the potential damage.

Ukraine is negotiating with the US for weapons systems, particularly the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) that would let the Ukrainian armed forces strike targets deep behind Russian lines. This has been denied because of fears that Ukraine might use them to hit targets in Russia that are not in the theater of operations. Moreover, the US has only recently given the Ukrainians kits to convert conventional bombs into long-range precision strike weapons. A gratuitous attack on the Kremlin would scuttle all Ukrainian hopes of getting long-range weapons.

When in Danger, When in Doubt, Run in Circles, Scream, and Shout

I’m sure there will be a lot said about “escalation,” “World War III,” and “Putin taking the gloves off.” This is just a vatnik coping strategy. If you think Russia hasn’t been using every means at its disposal since March-April 2022, you haven’t been paying attention. Russia has used every non-nuclear weapon it owns to target Ukraine. It has failed to destroy Ukraine’s army, and it has failed to destroy Ukrainian civilian morale. He can’t “escalate” conventionally because the Russian armed forces are sh**. Xi Jinping, who is Putin’s puppetmaster, not his ally, won’t permit Putin to use nuclear weapons.

The most that will happen is that Russia will step up its attacks on Ukrainian cities under the banner of “they tried to kill our President so we can do whatever the hell we want in retaliation.” I think we’re way past the high tide of Russian capability to launch large-scale missile attacks targeting anything but Ukraine’s under-defended strategic periphery. The most likely course of action is the old “waving the bloody shirt” and trying to use this as a rallying point to increase enlistments in the military and support for the war. Good luck with that.