The Kremlin Hit with Two Drones — An Assassination Attempt Gone Wrong?

Jakub Ferencik
4 min readMay 4

On May 3 2023, video footage of the Kremlin showed two drones appearing and then exploding on its roof. One of these caused a fire.

Russia claimed that it downed the drones, that the damage was minimal, and that no one was injured.

It also took the occasion to accuse Ukraine of an assassination attempt on Putin.

Ukraine denies these allegations, claiming that ‘We don’t attack Putin, or Moscow, we fight on our territory.’

But where does the evidence point to?

Photo by Michael Parulava on Unsplash

Putin’s life is a clear target. Many even in Russia have called for his life. He is a dictator in the end, with a life-long tenure. There are very few “democratic” ways to get rid of him.

Some, such as Ilya Ponomarev, who has mobilized strong dissent among Russians from abroad through various media channels, has even stated that he will pay anyone who kills Putin $1 million USD.

Many other rewards have been put on Putin’s life.

When calling for this reward, Ponomarev estimated that Putin would only have one year left, at most. Unfortunately, his prediction was wrong.

Ponomarev argued that there is growing hate toward Putin domestically in Russia because of what he is doing in Ukraine. And many see capital punishment as the only way to remove the ruling tsar from the Kremlin.

They might just be right.

But Ukraine is not naive enough to think that two drones could feasibly target Putin. In the first place, Putin is rarely ever at the Kremlin. In fact, experts claim that he probably never sleeps in the Kremlin at all.

Who’s Behind the Attack?

At the moment, we do not even have it confirmed that Ukraine was behind these attacks.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had not been able to validate the reported attack and that Russian assertions should be taken with a “very large shaker of salt.”

Nonetheless, Russia released a statement accusing Ukraine of terrorism — oh the irony.

Jakub Ferencik

Author of “Up in the Air” & “Beyond Reason” available on AMAZON | MA McGill Uni | Research assistant for EUROPEUM Prague | 700+ blog posts with 1+ mil. views