On May 3, two armed drones plummeted toward the Kremlin. A minimum of one exploded directly above the dome of the Kremlin Senate, causing shrapnel to rain down on the house of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian reports state that each drones were shot down by air defenses, but this may’t be visually confirmed from available footage.
One video of the attack shows a fixed-wing drone gliding past the dome of the Senate Palace constructing toward a goal beyond before exploding in a cloud of flaming debris. Two individuals may be seen climbing up the steps near the dome for the time being of the attack.
Formerly the house of the Tsar’s Governing Senate, the triangular Senate Palace now houses Russia’s presidential administration.
Nobody was reported injured, and Putin was apparently not even present on the time of the attack, residing as a substitute at Novo-Ogoryovo.
A separate drone attack on a Russian oil storage facility in Krasnodar does appear to have caused some damage.
But even an ineffectual attack on Moscow’s “fortress inside a city” is a shock, and raises questions on the Russian military’s ability to guard Moscow’s airspace—especially lower than every week before the May 9 Victory Day military parade, which for now will proceed as scheduled. Nonetheless, there’s now a blanket ban on operating any drones within the Moscow area.
Ukraine’s government has denied responsibility for the attack, with official suggesting that the attack may either have been the results of actions by local Russian resistance forces, or a false-flag designed to create support for further escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken also advised taking Kremlin’s accusations “with a grain of salt.”
Nonetheless, this attack follows a pattern of diverse preceding strikes on targets inside Russian borders, which have been denied by Kyiv since Putin launched his massive recent invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow may mount an intensified retaliatory strike, likely favoring Kyiv and maybe targeting government buildings—and even individual officials. There are presently calls on Russian social media baying for an excellent more vicious response than Russia’s already continual strategic bombing of Ukrainian cities.
How did they pull it off?
Russian bombers and rocket launchers have poured a staggering array of glide bombs, rockets, hypersonic glide vehicles, Iranian kamikaze drones, and cruise and ballistic missiles into cities across Ukraine since Russia’s massive invasion in 2022.
But even from the conflict’s early days, there have been retaliatory pin pricks—a helicopter raid on a fuel depot across the border, a strike on a Russian strategic bomber base using modified Soviet target-practice drones, and so forth.
Time beyond regulation, drone attacks particularly have pushed deeper and deeper into Russian airspace, creeping closer and closer to Moscow. While (most) drones could also be loads slower than the jet bombers and fighters Russian air defense missiles are designed to shoot down, they have an inclination to have a low-radar signature because of small size and construction from non-reflective composite materials. When that’s combined with flying low and slow to mask themselves using intervening terrain, it significantly complicates radar detection—an issue Russia’s military first encountered over Syria.
In actual fact, the Kremlin’s vulnerability to the low-and-slow approach was demonstrated way back in 1987, when an idealistic, peace-minded German named Mathias Rust someway penetrated its airspace in a Cessna 172 light aircraft and landed near Red Square.
The Kremlin drone attack likely could have come about in two ways. One would have been to have agents smuggle in shorter-range drones into Russia to execute an attack. The opposite would have been for a bigger, long-range drone in Ukraine to slide through Russian air defenses.
Keep in mind the undeniable fact that ground-based radio command-links for drones cannot normally exceed 110-miles range by much. Nonetheless, a drone could also be programmed to autonomously perform an attack—particularly if the drone is aided by satellite navigation for precision, stays linked using a satellite-communications, is relayed to fall under a control of a forward-deployed operator closer to the goal.
Samuel Bendett, an authority on Russian developments in drone and AI on the Center for Naval Analyses and CNAS security think tank, told Popular Mechanics that the attack’s launch point was unclear.
“Ukraine has PD-1, PD-2 and UJ-22 drones that look just like the one within the video, in addition to Chinese-made Mugin-5 that was apparently utilized in earlier attacks. It might have been any certainly one of these drones.”
“There have been earlier drone attacks where UAVs landed within the Moscow region, apparently by avoiding air defenses because of flying low about ground… Ukrainian have been attacking Russian territory proper before and this attack carries massive symbolism since May 9 parade is presupposed to still happen on Red Square,” Bendett noted further.
What are the implications?
Ukraine can’t generate anywhere near the quantity of long-range strikes Russia can—and the drone-based means it does have at its disposal don’t hit as hard as large bombs or cruise missiles.
Thus, for its strategic attacks to have material consequences, they need to either damage or destroy especially high value targets (like ships, helpful aircraft, and so forth) or strike especially volatile targets like fuel or ammunition depots (where even a modest amount of explosives can go a really good distance).
It’s unlikely that those that planned the Kremlin drone attack genuinely believed it could kill Putin, or otherwise seriously impair the Kremlin’s operations through direct damage. But they undoubtedly hoped that the political shock of the strike could be a profit to them.
The attack will undoubtedly compel the Kremlin to beef up short-range, low-altitude air defenses as a way to higher protect against drone attacks prone to slip through the otherwise extensive long-range, high-altitude air defense umbrella around Moscow.
That can likely concentrate on electronic warfare systems that may jam radio-control and satellite-navigation signals, in addition to short-range air defense vehicles just like the gun and missile-armed Pantsir-S, and possibly additional short-range radars or other kinds of sensors. Russia is already known to extensively employ satellite-navigation spoofing technology wherever Putin goes for his protection.
In fact, reinforced Moscow defenses impose additional costs, and divert resources from those deployed to secure battlefield and rear-area positions near the frontline in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the general severity and direction of the political consequences of the Kremlin drone attack cannot yet be deduced.