[Two drones struck inside the Kremlin complex early Tuesday. We
don’t know exactly what happened but the Russian claims of a
Ukrainian attack are doubtful. It’s more likely that Vladimir
Putin’s regime is preparing an excuse for a new escalation.]
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FOUR POSSIBILITIES FOR THE KREMLIN ATTACK  
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Tom Nichols
May 3, 2023
The Atlantc
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_ Two drones struck inside the Kremlin complex early Tuesday. We
don’t know exactly what happened but the Russian claims of a
Ukrainian attack are doubtful. It’s more likely that Vladimir
Putin’s regime is preparing an excuse for a new escalation. _

A screenshot from a video circulating on social media allegedly
showing drones attacking the Kremlin overnight on May 3., (New York
Times)

 

A Possible False Flag

Here’s what we know: Early this morning, two drones struck inside
the Kremlin (which is actually a walled complex that surrounds several
government buildings and ancient churches and palaces). _The_ _New
York Times _has verified
[[link removed]] three
videos, two of which appear to show “a drone flying toward and
exploding over the Kremlin Senate,” which houses the president’s
executive office, and the other showing the dome of the Senate
building on fire.

That’s as much as we know. The Russians, of course, are blaming the
Ukrainians, and claiming that the strike was an attempt to kill
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who at the time was at his compound
in the Moscow suburb of Novo-Ogarevo, Russian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied this charge and
specifically denied targeting Putin: “We don’t attack Putin or
Moscow,” he said
[[link removed]] during
his visit to Finland. “We fight on our territory.”

But who would (or could) launch such an attack? I see four
possibilities in ascending order of likelihood—with the caveat that
I am drawing on jumbled and partial information, so treat this as a
preliminary and tentative list.

First, it is possible that the Ukrainians or some Ukrainian team in
Moscow could have used drones. But it is unlikely, because it
doesn’t make much sense. An attack on the Kremlin might be an
obvious symbolic move, but a demonstrative strike on an empty building
at night would be a waste of already strained Ukrainian intelligence
resources, and would likely annoy the Americans and NATO in the
bargain. (Also, as one former U.S. defense official
[[link removed]] noted, the
Ukrainians are pretty good at tracking Putin, and if reports of the
event are accurate, they likely knew he wasn’t in the building.)

A second possibility is that Russian intelligence and military
authorities got wind of a plot by some group to strike the Kremlin,
and then let it happen as a way to goad Putin into using even more
force in Ukraine. My friend Nick Gvosdev, a senior fellow at
the Foreign Policy Research Institute [[link removed]],
reminded me today that Russian spooks are not exactly averse to such
cold-blooded moves: In 2002, terrorists took hostages
[[link removed]] at
a theater in downtown Moscow, and he noted that there have been
accusations over the years that the intelligence services knew it was
coming and yet let it happen, as a means of strengthening possible
demands for more power to deal with such events.

Still, this seems like an overly complicated explanation. The Russian
army needs more “cannon meat,” to use the Russian expression, but
even the Defense Ministry probably realizes that their campaigns to
dragoon more men are reaching their limit. The intelligence services
have been in hot water ever since they misled Putin
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the chances of success in Ukraine, and they might want to use a bomb
hitting the Kremlin to press their claims for more resources and
power—but they also run the risk that a drone strike in the heart of
the city would look like yet more evidence of their incompetence.

It is also possible that the strike on the Kremlin came from Russian
dissidents, especially if it was done with some sort of crude,
jerry-rigged device. Again, unlikely but not impossible, especially
with social anger rising over waves of conscription that were supposed
to take place out in the Russian boondocks and never touch Moscow and
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. Russia is
already functionally a fascist state, and a plot to bomb the Kremlin
and kill the president might well be the spur for the kind of
iron-fisted mass repression Putin and his advisers have avoided until
now.

But the most disturbing possibility is that this is a Russian
government put-up job from start to finish. There are several reasons
this makes more sense than other explanations.

First, an attack on the Kremlin would give Putin the rationalization
he’s been seeking for some kind of dramatic and murderous action
that might not make much military sense, but that would destabilize
Ukraine and unsettle the world on the eve of a major
Ukrainian counteroffensive
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The Russians, I believe, are dreading this coming operation, and want
to change the narrative at home and abroad. I have no idea what Putin
has up his sleeve, but even on his better days, he is prone to
strategically idiotic moves. He might try to drag Belarus into the
war, he could make more nuclear threats, or he could even order
redoubled efforts to kill Zelensky.

In any case, faking a drone attack would fit into the long-standing
Russian affinity for “false flag” operations. Though conspiracy
theorists in the United States often trumpet unfounded claims of false
flags, professional intelligence services do conduct such operations,
and Moscow has been particularly fond of them all the way back to the
Soviet period. The series of apartment bombings in Russia in 1999, for
example, that became the pretext for escalation in Chechnya, were
almost certainly orchestrated by the secret services (a possibility so
disturbing that I and other Russia experts were loath to accept
it—but which is now, in my view, undeniable
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And in the past year, the Russians warned that the Ukrainians were
going to unleash a “dirty bomb,” a ludicrous claim that even led
China to give the Kremlin some stink eye
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playing around with nuclear threats.

This drone strike looks like the same play, only without nuclear
materials. A terrorist attack in the capital would be a pretext for
the Russians to warn the world that this time,
they’re _really_ going to take the gloves off. Ukrainian officials
are worried that this is exactly the Russian plan. Mykhailo Podolyak,
an adviser to Zelensky, told
[[link removed]] the BBC that the
incident indicated Russia could be "preparing a large-scale terrorist
provocation" in Ukraine. That’s a pretty chilling possibility,
considering that the Russian campaign plan at this point already
consists of indiscriminate war crimes.

"Something is happening” over the skies of the Russian Federation,
Podolyak said, “but definitely without Ukraine’s drones over the
Kremlin.” At this point, I agree, but we’ll soon know more—and
we should brace for what’s coming from Russia’s desperate
dictator
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_[TOM NICHOLS is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of
the Atlantic Daily newsletter
[[link removed]].  He
is a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval
War College, where he taught for 25 years, and an instructor at the
Harvard Extension School. He has served as a legislative aide in the
Massachusetts House and the U.S. Senate. He writes about international
security, nuclear weapons, Russia, and the challenges to democracy in
the United States and around the world—along with occasional
contrarian views on popular culture. His books include The Death of
Expertise [[link removed]] and Our Own
Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy
[[link removed]]. He is also a five-time
undefeated Jeopardy champion.]_

* Vladimir Putin
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* Russia
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* Ukraine war
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* Ukraine
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* Reichstag Fire
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* Chechnya
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* Russian military
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* nuclear weapons
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