War: Ukraine denies hand in Kremlin drone attack; Russia accuses the US of involvement
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Russia on Thursday accused the US of involvement in what it said was a drone attack on the Kremlin on Wednesday, aiming to kill Vladimir Putin, as a former President sought to ‘physically eliminate’ Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenski who denied his country used the drone to kill the Russian President.
Mick Mulroy, a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and CIA officer, said Putin was not in Moscow at the time of the so-called drone attack by Ukraine which monitors the Russian President’s movements closely.
“Russia may be fabricating this to use as a pretext to target President Zelensky – something they have tried to do in the past.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he could not validate Russia’s accusation that Ukraine had tried to kill Putin, but said he would take anything the Russian Presidency said with a “very large shaker of salt.”
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called Wednesday for the “elimination” of Ukraine President Zelensky after Russia said it had shot down two drones aimed at Putin’s Kremlin residence, in what it called a Ukrainian “terrorist” assassination attempt, the media reported on Thursday.
President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, without citing evidence, claimed Ukraine had acted on the US’ orders with the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin citadel in the early hours of Wednesday.
Kyiv denied involvement in that incident, which followed a string of explosions over the past week targeting freight trains and oil depots in western Russia and Russian-controlled Crimea. Moscow blamed Ukraine for those attacks too.
“Attempts to disown this attack on the Kremlin, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington,” Peskov said.
The Kremlin said it reserved the right to retaliate.
Peskov said an urgent investigation was underway and that any response would be carefully considered and balanced.
Separately, Russia’s foreign ministry said the alleged drone attack “must not go unanswered” and that it showed Kyiv had no desire to end the 15-month-old war at the negotiating table.
Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for what Moscow says are frequent drone strikes against infrastructure and military targets, particularly in regions close to Russia.
President Zelensky visited the International Court of Justice (ICC) in The Hague on Thursday and said Putin must be brought to trial over the war. The ICC in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the suspected deportation of children from Ukraine.
Russia, which is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction, denied committing atrocities during its “special military operation” in Ukraine, which it claimed was necessary to protect its own security against a hostile, aggressive West.
Currently, no peace talks are being held to end the war, which has devastated Ukrainian towns and cities, killed thousands of people, and driven millions from their homes.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it was aware that Pope Francis was thinking about ways to end the war, but that it did not know of any detailed peace plans from the Vatican.
Putin’s office said defenses downed two drones overnight and threatened to retaliate when necessary. It said Ukraine attempted a strike on Putin’s residence in the Kremlin and described it as “a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the President.”
