Kyiv, false flag or Vladimir Putin foes: who’s really behind Kremlin ‘attack’?

A drone is shot down as it flies toward the Kremlin. Picture: Supplied.

Russia says the drone “attack” on the Kremlin was an attempt to assassinate President Putin. But Kyiv says it is a fairytale conjured by the Kremlin to justify a new attack on Ukraine.

Ukraine has never claimed responsibility for strikes on Russian soil, to pacify western allies anxious about a full-blown conflict between Russia and NATO. That said, there is plenty of evidence that Ukraine has repeatedly struck outside its borders.

Putin used the bombing of a Moscow apartment block as a pretext to restart the Chechen war in 1999. Picture: AP.

Russia has a history of “false flag” operations, including the bombing of a Moscow block of flats that Putin used as a pretext to restart the Chechen war in 1999. Western intelligence also revealed false flag operations to justify invading Ukraine. Russia had hinted that Ukraine was hosting western biological weapons labs or experimenting with nuclear devices.

Attacking the Kremlin would be a peculiar way for Ukraine to try to kill Putin. Paranoid about his security, he is rarely there.

Russian resistance groups were linked to a car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, right, seen here with her ultra-nationalist father Aleksander Dugin.

Nor would it be a good look for Russia, even as a false flag attack. Images of an explosion over the Kremlin have been beamed around the world and risk making the Putin regime appear vulnerable.

Another possibility is an attack by internal opponents of Putin: Russian resistance groups opposed to the war, possibly acting with assistance from Ukrainian intelligence. Such groups have been linked to a car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian writer, in August.

The Times