By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Ivan Nechepurenko
The Kremlin claimed Wednesday that Ukraine had launched a drone strike at President Vladimir Putin’s residence overnight. The two drones were disabled by state security services and Putin was uninjured, the Kremlin said.
It was not immediately possible to verify the Russian claim, and a Ukrainian official said Kyiv had “no information about the so-called night attacks on the Kremlin.”
In a statement, the Kremlin said it “regards these actions as a planned terrorist attack and an attempt on the president,” and reserved the right to retaliate. It said that “timely actions taken by the military and special services” had disabled the drones, causing some debris to scatter on the Kremlin grounds, it said.
Putin was not in the Kremlin at the time of the incident, according to his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov. There were no casualties, the Kremlin said.
If confirmed, it would be the most audacious attempted strike on Russian soil since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Local and regional authorities in Russia have reported a series of drone strikes in recent months. Some have landed close to Ukraine’s border with Russia, but at least one has hit south of Moscow. Ukraine has not acknowledged responsibility for most of the incidents. Moscow is around 280 miles northeast of the Ukrainian border at its closest point.
Last month, The Washington Post reported that the United States had secretly monitored discussions among Ukrainian officials about possible attacks against Moscow timed to coincide with the Feb. 24 anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The White House feared that such a move would provoke an aggressive response from Moscow, and two days before the anniversary, the CIA said that Ukraine’s intelligence directorate “had agreed, at Washington’s request, to postpone strikes” on Moscow. The information was part of a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents obtained by The Post and other news organizations.