Russia has lambasted Ukraine accusing them of attempting an overnight drone attack on the Kremlin with the aim of killing President Vladimir Putin, an accusation which has now become the most dramatic charge Moscow has levelled against Kyiv since the war on its neighbour began.
The allegation was made on Thursday morning by the Russian government and reported by several state news agencies.
Putin was not in the building at the time and there was no material damage to the Kremlin, Russian officials said, as they warned of their right to retaliate.
‘The Kremlin has assessed these actions as a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9 Parade,’ state news outlet RIA reported, adding that Putin had not changed his schedule and was working at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.
Moscow has vowed the parade will go ahead, amid calls for a tough reaction against Ukraine.
Ex-President Dmitry Medvedev called for the ‘elimination’ of Zelenskyy. ‘We will demand the use of weapons capable of stopping and destroying the Kyiv terrorist regime,’ said Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian Duma and Putin ally.
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In a statement, the Investigative Committee of Russia, which probes major crimes, revealed that it had opened a ‘criminal case on terrorism.’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied the accusations, saying his country had not attacked Moscow or its president.
‘We don’t attack Putin, or Moscow; we fight on our territory,’ Zelenskyy told a news conference in Helsinki, Finland. “We defend our villages and cities.’
Senior Ukrainian presidential official Mykhailo Podolyak also told the reporters that Kyiv had nothing to do with the alleged incident.
In a tweet, he suggested Russia’s claims were a false flag, saying, ‘Russia is clearly preparing a large-scale terrorist attack.’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced doubt about the allegations. ‘I’ve seen the reports. I cannot validate them, we simply don’t know,’ he said at an event in Washington, DC. ‘I would take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt.’
Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian defence analyst who served as a senior research officer in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, told reporters that if the Kremlin’s accusations were true, it would be difficult to “say which kind of drones were used’.