by tyler | May 4, 2023 | CNN, europe
The tight ring of security that surrounds the seat of the Russian presidency was punctured in dramatic fashion by what appeared to be two attempted drone strikes in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
But until the Kremlin chose to publicize the incident around 12 hours later, social media footage of the incident had gained little attention.
Why Russia decided to reveal the security breach is unclear. But in a five-paragraph statement on Wednesday, the Kremlin made the incendiary claim that the drones were an assassination attempt launched by Ukraine on the the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Kyiv forcefully denied the claim.
Kyiv was bombarded with missiles in the hours following Russia’s claims, in keeping with Putin’s historic willingness to strike Ukrainian cities after any alleged act of provocation.
Many details about the incident remain murky. Here’s what we know – and the questions that remain.
Moscow said the alleged attack took place in the early hours of Wednesday. Two “unmanned aerial vehicles” were intercepted and destroyed before they caused any damage or injury, the Kremlin said.
The Russian president was not in the building at the time, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Videos then emerged on social media appearing to show the incident. CNN analysis of these videos supports Moscow’s claim that two drones were flown above the Kremlin.
A video that appeared to show smoke rising from the Kremlin surfaced on a Telegram channel at 2:37 a.m. local time Wednesday. The first reports of the incident citing the Kremlin came via Russian state media TASS and RIA around 2:33 p.m. local time – around 12 hours later.
Shortly after the first media reports, another video appearing to show the moment a drone exploded above the Kremlin began circulating widely on social media. In the video, the apparent drone seems to fly towards the building’s domed roof, followed by what looks like a small explosion.
In this video, two people appear to be climbing on the dome holding flashlights, and can be seen ducking down just before the moment of the explosion. The people climbing the dome are not present in the first of these videos, but appear in the second, suggesting they were responding to the fire caused by the first drone at the time the subsequent drone appeared.
The Kremlin blamed Ukraine, describing the purported drone attack as an “attempt on the President’s life.”
In a statement, the Kremlin said, “We view these actions as a planned terrorist attack and an assassination attempt,” adding that “Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures wherever and whenever it deems appropriate.”
On Thursday, Russia also claimed the US was involved in the attack. “Undoubtedly, Such decisions, the definition of goals, the definition of means – all this is dictated to Kyiv from Washington,” Peksov said.
Both allegations drew sharp denials from Kyiv and Washington.
“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a news conference in Helsinki on Wednesday.
“We fight on our territory, we are defending our villages and cities. We don’t have enough weapon[s] for this. That’s why we don’t use it anywhere [else],” Zelensky said. “We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to tribunal,” he said.
John Kirby, the National Security Council’s Coordinator for Strategic Communications, called Russia’s allegation that the US directed Ukraine to carry out such an attack “ridiculous.”
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said it the US did not know who was responsible. “I would take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt,” he told a Washingon Post event on Wednesday.
If Ukraine wasn’t the perpetrator, one possibility is that the incident was the work of Russian partisans – as claimed by a former Russian lawmaker linked with militant groups in Russia.
Ilya Ponomarev told CNN’s Matthew Chance that “it’s one of (the) Russian partisan groups,” adding that “I cannot say more, as they have not yet publicly claimed responsibility.” Ponomarev, who lives in exile in Ukraine and Poland, was the only Russian MP to vote against the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and has since been included on a list of terrorist suspects, according to the Russian authorities.
According to Ponomarev, members of partisans group inside Russia are usually “youngsters, students, residents of large cities. I am aware of the partisan activity in approximately 40 cities across Russia,” he told CNN.
Evidence of actual partisan activity inside Russia remains scant. A formation calling itself the Russian Volunteer Corps is fighting on the side of Kyiv in Ukraine and claimed to have carried out a brief armed incursion into Russian territory earlier this year, but the group’s size is unclear. Russia claims Ukraine has carried out drone strikes on military airfields in western and southwestern Russia, but Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied those allegations.
US officials have also said they were still assessing the incident, and had no information about who might have been responsible. Whatever the truth, any admission of a security breach at the heart of the Kremlin is remarkable.
Moscow already launched a wave of missiles at Kyiv following the incident, a move in line with its playbook after previous flashpoints in the war.
And messages written on Russian drones launched at Odesa overnight read “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin,” according to the Ukrainian military, an apparent reference to the alleged attack.
US and Ukrainian officials have in the past warned that Russia has planned so-called “false flag” attacks along Russia’s border with Ukraine as a pretext for military escalation, including Russian claims ahead of last year’s full-scale invasion that Ukraine was sending “saboteurs” over the Russian border. Russia has also been embarrassed in recent months by symbolic incidents such as the sinking of the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, under disputed circumstances.
Moscow is also looking to project strength by following through with its planned Victory Day parade. Peskov reiterated that the parade would go ahead as planned.
But while Russia has on occasion used missile bombardments around Ukraine to show its anger following flashpoints in the conflict, the ground fighting in eastern Ukraine has been bogged down in stalemate for months and it appears unlikely that Wednesday’s incident will have a material impact on momentum.
by tyler | May 4, 2023 | CNN, europe
At first glance, it looks like a sci-fi movie. What appear to be two drones, streaking across the night sky in Moscow, head straight for the Kremlin, on target to hit the historic Senate Palace, the official residence of Vladimir Putin.
Suddenly, just as one passes the Russian flag flying atop the building, it explodes, raining fiery shards down on the roof.
The video first appeared in the early hours of Wednesday on Russian social media. The Kremlin was slow to react, eventually releasing a statement calling it a “planned terrorist attack,” a deliberate attempt by Ukraine to assassinate Putin, but presenting no evidence.
The president was not injured, the Kremlin stressed, threatening that “Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures, wherever and whenever it deems appropriate.”
The denial from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was swift: “We don’t attack Putin or Moscow; we fight on our territory.”
A former senior US diplomat called that significant: after several previous mysterious attacks inside Russia, Ukrainian officials have wryly denied knowing anything about it.
“This,” the former diplomat said, “was definitive.”
If the apparent drone attack itself was surreal, questions about how it happened – and what could come next – were even more fantastical.
Months ago, Russian authorities began mounting air-defense installations on Defense Ministry and administrative buildings across Moscow. The Kremlin is one of the most heavily guarded government complexes in the world. Russia’s border with Ukraine is protected as well. If these were drones from Ukraine, how did they evade detection? Did Moscow’s defenses fail? Even more embarrassingly for the Kremlin, how did the drones get so close to the Kremlin?
Russian state media, for the most part, are sticking to the precise wording of the Kremlin statement on the attack, as well as broadcasting daytime pictures of the Kremlin showing things are “back to normal” and that the president is hard at work – all signs Russian propagandists are having difficulty finding the right “message” to explain how their president was almost “assassinated.”
Would Russia carry out the attack itself? In 1999, just months before Putin was elected president for the first time, Russia was hit with a wave of apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people and which then-prime minister Putin cited to justify launching the Second Chechen War.
His tough approach helped him win the presidency, but suspicion still lingers about who really was behind the bombings. With the apparent drone attacks, no one died, and the Kremlin’s vaunted security looked feeble, but it gives the Kremlin an opportunity to rally Russians to support Putin against those who would harm him.
Ukraine officials said the attacks might be exploited by Russia to launch even more vicious attacks on Ukraine, including “terrorist” attacks.
Throughout its history Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, has used “false flag” operations, carrying out aggressive actions while blaming its enemies but, for more than a year, the Putin regime has been blaming Ukraine, NATO, and the United States for the war in Ukraine.
Does it really need another excuse to try to kill Zelensky?
That isn’t stopping Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Putin’s Security Council, a frequent and rabid Tweeter, from claiming it is time to “physically eliminate” Zelensky.
“There are no options left other than the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique,” Medvedev said. “He is not even needed to sign the act of unconditional capitulation. Hitler, as you know, did not sign it either.”
Medvedev neglected to note that Russia tried, and failed, to eliminate the Ukrainian president in the initial stages of the invasion in February 2022.
What about the possibility that Russians opposed to Putin launched a drone attack from within Russia? Striking at the heart of Putin’s Russia, even with drones that apparently were disabled by the Kremlin’s air defense, would be an unparalleled propaganda feat.
Former Russian politician Ilya Ponamarev told CNN’s Matthew Chance that it was, indeed, “one of Russia’s partisan groups,” adding he could not say more since the group had not publicly claimed responsibility.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautions that any claims by Moscow should be taken with a “large shaker of salt.”
With the Kremlin’s stranglehold on domestic media, Russian citizens are, no doubt, trying to make sense of the attacks.
The timing may be one of the only things that makes sense. On May 9, Russia will celebrate “Victory Day,” commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
This year, with drones apparently attacking the Kremlin, it may be harder than usual to feel victorious.
by tyler | May 4, 2023 | CNN, europe
Eight people have died in the city of Brno, the Czech Republic, after a large fire broke out early on Thursday in a structure thought to be used as a shelter by homeless people, Czech police said.
Six men and two women were killed after the fire engulfed several mobile cabins near a residential complex in Brno, the second largest Czech city, police said.
The police said that initial investigation suggests the people became trapped inside the cabins, unable to find their way out because of heavy smoke.
“According to the owner, the building was empty as of yesterday afternoon, but homeless people were using it as a shelter to sleep in,” the police said in a statement.
The cabins were used as a dormitory for construction workers in the past, but have been abandoned for some time. The police said the structure was slated for demolition and the people who were caught in the blaze entered it “without authorization.”
The Fire Rescue Service of the South Moravian Region said in a statement that the fire has been extinguished as of Thursday morning.
“This is a huge human tragedy that cannot leave anyone untouched. Big thank you to the firefighters who bravely fought the flames,” Brno’s mayor Markéta Vaňková said in a statement.
by tyler | May 3, 2023 | CNN, europe
For days now, the blasts have echoed the condition each country’s military is in.
Ukraine is apparently striking at fuel depots in Russian-occupied areas and inside Russia itself – seemingly precise attacks but ones to which Kyiv is making no overt claim.
Russia has been lashing out at what often seem to be civilian targets in Ukraine, either in rage or through ineptitude. In Uman, more than 20 people died; in Pavlohrad, there were two dead and many injured.
In Kherson on Wednesday, three were killed when a crowded hypermarket was hit at 11 in the morning. And in Zaporizhzhia, two rockets slammed into a quiet residential garden that same overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, leaving a crater in a genteel, freshly sculpted lawn.
Nobody died in this last strike, but perhaps only because the first missile sent two families rushing for cover before the second struck.
During the night, the city of Zaporizhzhia was blasted with repeated air raid sirens – a familiar noise in the past months, but this time accompanied by explosions, suggesting Moscow’s escalation, as Russian forces apparently send S300 missiles into cities, according to local officials and accounts.
We don’t often know when Russia hits a military target in Ukraine, but the number of strikes on civilian targets suggests either extreme negligence and inaccuracy, or a tactic of intentionally terrifying ordinary people.
A pattern is forming, outside of Moscow’s repeated disregard for human life. Night by night, each side appears to be trying to weaken the other.
The Ukrainian strikes have hit obvious infrastructure targets – railroad tracks, huge fuel depots – which suggest both how researched their coming campaign is, and how poorly prepared Russia is. It is still, for the most part, doing things in the same old, obvious way.
The signals ahead of Ukraine’s long-heralded counteroffensive are getting louder. For two weeks, a slight uptick in clashes has been reported by pro-Russian officials along the Zaporizhzhia front lines, through which Kyiv’s forces will likely have to push if they are to separate the occupied peninsula of Crimea from the rest of occupied Ukraine – a key strategic goal. It is unclear if this uptick is Ukraine probing, or business as usual – and that is entirely the point.
But it’s been similarly fluid around Bakhmut, the deeply symbolic but strategically less vital city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region that Russia made its winter goal.
A few weeks ago, Moscow claimed to be near to encircling Ukraine’s forces. But over the weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which has done much of the fighting there, warned that the Russians might not be able to hold on to their positions without more artillery shells.
Ukraine was quick to capitalize on that statement and sent senior officials to the area to claim Russia had already begun pulling back. Thousands of lives have are likely to have are been lost there – and Moscow has definitively failed to achieve its slender goals.
And now, in Kherson, Ukrainian officials have ordered a 58-hour curfew from 8 p.m. on May 5, barring locals from leaving their houses. It is under the guise of a law enforcement operation, but comes after a fortnight of speculation about an increased Ukrainian presence on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, where the occupied part of Kherson region begins.
Whatever Ukraine intends to use this break in civilian life for, Moscow cannot ignore it. If it is a distraction, the Russians must observe it to be sure; they must even adjust their force strengths ahead of it, in case they are taken off-guard.
So, both in the east and west of occupied areas, Ukraine is trying to keep Russia off-balance and guessing, while launching precise attacks on its fuel depots and officials in the middle of these areas – in occupied Melitopol.
This comes amid a deluge of comments from Ukrainian officials that the weather – for the past fortnight alternating between rain and bold sunshine – has held them back. In fact, they’ve said little at all, bar that the weather has delayed them.
Perhaps it has. Perhaps it hasn’t. But there are some pretty clear signs Ukraine has begun part of its plan, and the warmer weather of the weeks ahead will likely enable the rest of it to unfold.
by tyler | May 3, 2023 | CNN, europe
A 13-year-old boy opened fire on his classmates at a school in the Serbian capital Belgrade on Wednesday, rocking the Balkan country.
The shooting left at least eight children dead, along with a security guard. While Serbia is awash with guns, mass shootings like these are rare.
Here’s what we know.
The horrific events unfolded early in the school day on Wednesday, at Vladislav Ribnikar Elementary School, a well-known institution in Vračar, an upscale area of the Serbian capital.
After arriving at school, the suspect “immediately pulled the pistol out of his bag” and shot the school’s security guard, Belgrade’s police chief Veselin Milić.
“He then he went to the on-duty staff member and sat down at his desk like he did nothing wrong. There was one girl at her desk, another at the piano. He took their lives.”
The suspect then walked towards a history classroom, shooting as he moved down the corridor, before entering the room and shooting the teacher and his fellow students from the doorway, Milić said.
“He left the classroom, went out into the schoolyard, releasing the magazine from the weapon, throwing it down the steps.” The suspect called the police himself and waited until he was arrested in the yard, officials said.
Seven girls and one boy were killed, Milić said. A further six children and one teacher have been hospitalized, according to Serbia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The teenage suspect was a student at the school, authorities said.
He had two guns in his possession, the Serbian interior minister added at a press conference.
“The parent had several pieces of weapon and kept them locked up. The safe had a code. Obviously the kid had the code as soon as he managed to get hold of those two guns. And three frames full of 15 bullets each,” Bratislav Gasic said.
Separately, Milić said the boy had a 9mm pistol as well as a small calibre pistol in a bag, as well as four Molotov cocktails.
The alleged shooter was filmed being taken from the school in handcuffs with a jacket over his head and wearing blue, skinny jeans.
The father of the suspect was arrested on Wednesday. Gasic said it was known that the father had previously gone to a shooting range with his son.
As news broke, a crowd of anxious parents gathered outside the school.
“My child is still in shock, full of adrenaline, we haven’t been able to calm her down,” a mother of one child told CNN affiliate N1.
Another father recounted a chaotic morning. “I was heading to the bank, and I saw a bunch of police. That was around 8:50. I came running. I saw the school psychologist, I saw the school staff, the teachers who were in shock,” the father told N1.
“The police came quickly, from what I could see. I asked: ‘Where’s my kid?’ And allegedly, one man said that the history teacher was shot. I went back to my apartment to look at my child’s schedule, and she was actually in history class. I took my wife with me and we went back out on the street,” he said.
“I saw that the security guard was lying under a table … I went through the door looking for an attendant. I didn’t know what to do. I asked ‘Where’s my kid?’ and no one was saying anything,” the father said. The man later learned that his daughter had escaped unharmed.
Three days of mourning have been declared and other European countries have sent their condolences.
Serbia, a southern European country of nearly 7 million people, has more than 2,700,000 guns in private ownership – a huge ratio that is a legacy of years of conflict in the 1990s.
Only 44% of those guns are officially registered, according to a 2018 analysis by the Small Arms Survey.
This means there are 39 guns for every 100 Serbians, the data project at the Geneva Graduate Institute found. It is the highest level of civilian gun ownership in Europe, and the fifth-highest in the world. More than 1.5 million guns that people in Serbia own are unregistered, data shows.
And yet shootings of this kind are comparatively rare, due in large part to the country’s strict gun laws and amnesties for owners who hand in or register illegal firearms, according to Reuters.
by tyler | May 3, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russia claimed Ukraine launched an attempt to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin with a drone strike on the Kremlin overnight on Wednesday, an extraordinary allegation that was met with forceful denials in Kyiv.
The Kremlin said the attack was foiled and the alleged drones destroyed. Video that appeared on social media shows a bright flash and a puff of smoke over a part of the Kremlin, the official residence of the Russian president and the most potent symbol of power in Moscow.
In a statement, the Kremlin said it regarded the alleged attack as terrorism and a deliberate attempt on Putin’s life. “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit,” it added.
Ukraine denied involvement in the alleged strike. “As President Zelensky has stated numerous times before, Ukraine uses all means at its disposal to free its own territory, not to attack others,” the Ukrainian presidential spokesman, Sergiy Nykyforov, told CNN on Wednesday.
US officials said they were still assessing the incident, and had no information about who might have been responsible. Whatever the truth, any admission of a security breach at the heart of the Kremlin is remarkable.
Moscow said the alleged attack took place in the early hours of Wednesday. The Russian president was not in the building at the time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
CNN analysis of video showing the incident support the Kremlin’s claim that two drones were flown above the Kremlin early Wednesday, but did not show evidence of Ukrainian involvement:
A video that appeared to show smoke rising from the Kremlin surfaced on a local neighborhood channel on social media platform Telegram at 2:37 a.m. local time Wednesday. The first reports of the incident citing the Kremlin came via Russian state media TASS and RIA around 2.33 pm local time – around 12 hours later.
Shortly after the first media reports, another video appearing to show the moment a drone exploded above the Kremlin began circulating widely on social media. In the video, the drone appears to fly towards the building’s domed roof, followed by what looks like a small explosion.
In this video, two people appear to be climbing on the dome holding flashlights, and can be seen ducking down just before the moment of the explosion. The people climbing the drone are not present in the first of these videos, but appear in the second, suggesting they were responding to the fire caused by the first drone at the time the subsequent drone appeared.
The Kremlin Press Service has called the purported drone attack an “attempt on the President’s life,” said it was an “act of terrorism” and blamed Ukraine.
But Kyiv said that accusation of terrorism was better directed at Russia. “A terror attack destroyed blocks of residential buildings in Dnipro and Uman, or a missile at a line at Kramatorsk rail station and many other tragedies,” said Nykyforov, the Ukrainian presidential spokesman.
“What happened in Moscow is obviously about escalating the mood on the eve of May 9.” That day is known as “Victory Day” inside Russia, commemorating the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.
“It’s a trick to be expected from our opponents,” he said.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also denied Kyiv had any involvement and said it made no sense for Ukraine to have carried out the alleged strike.
“First of all, it absolutely does not solve any military goals. And it is very unhelpful in the context of preparing for our offensive actions. And it definitely does not change anything at a battlefield,” he said. “This would allow Russia to justify mass strikes on Ukrainian cities, civilians and infrastructure facilities. Why would we need that? What’s the logic?”
Podolyak also said Moscow’s claims were an attempt at controlling the narrative ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“Russia without a doubt is very afraid of Ukraine starting an offensive on the front line and is trying to seize the initiative, distract the attention and create distractions of a catastrophic nature,” he said. “So, Russian statements on such staged operations need to be taken as an attempt to create pretext for a large-scale terrorist attack in Ukraine.”
A US official said Washington had no warning about the alleged drone attack. “Whatever happened, there was no advanced warning,” the official told CNN, adding that authorities are still trying to find out more.
Another US official told CNN they are still working to assess Russia’s claims, and have not yet validated the Kremlin assertion that Ukraine tried to assassinate Putin.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had seen reports from Moscow about the alleged attack, but “can’t in any way validate them.”
“We simply don’t know,” Blinken said Wednesday at a Washington Post Live event.
“We’ll see what the facts are. And it’s really hard to comment or speculate on this without really knowing what the facts are,” Blinken added.
The founder and financier of the Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, declined to comment on the alleged attack when asked about the incident.
“I can’t comment on this phenomenon in any way. Maybe it was lightning,” Prigozhin said in a post on his official telegram channel. Instead, the Wagner leader asked for more ammunition.
In his response to the attack, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called for the use of weapons capable of “stopping and destroying the Kyiv terrorist regime.”
Kyiv is approximately 862 kilometers (about 535 miles) from Moscow. Russia has accused Ukraine of multiple attempted drone strikes deep inside Russian territory, including one earlier this year when the governor of the Moscow region claimed a Ukrainian drone had crashed near the village of Gubastovo, southeast of the capital.
