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The Chinese Global Times government newspaper described the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin early Wednesday morning as the crossing of a “red line” in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine: the targeting of heads of state.
Videos surfaced on Wednesday of unidentified objects in the airspace above the Kremlin in Moscow on Wednesday, apparently attempting to target the Russian capital. Russian officials announced shortly thereafter that the skyward objects civilians observed were armed drones deployed in an attempt, they claimed, to assassinate Vladimir Putin. The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry vowed “imminent and inevitable punishment” for the culprits once an investigation identifies them and, without directly blaming Ukraine, claimed the drone incident was proof of the necessity of Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.
“This makes fulfilling all the objectives and goals of Russia’s special military operation even more obvious. There must be no security threats emanating from the territory of Ukraine and no terrorist attacks must be perpetrated from there,” the Ministry asserted.
“The Kremlin views this incident as a premeditated terrorist attack and attempted assassination of the head of state,” the Russian news agency Tass detailed on Thursday. “Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures wherever and whenever it deems fit, the press service pointed out.”
Ukraine has denied responsibility for the presumed attack.
“We do not attack Putin or Moscow,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We fight on our territory, we are defending our villages and cities. We didn’t attack Putin. We leave it to [a] tribunal.”
Zelensky suggested that the Kremlin was blaming Ukraine for the attack because Putin “can no longer motivate his society and cannot simply send his military to their deaths. He has no victories, the world’s second army has lost on the battlefield.”
Communist China, a friendly state to Ukraine and one of Russia’s closest allies, had abstained from commenting on the Ukraine war for much of this week as a result of the country’s May Day holiday celebrating communist ideology, which spans the entire “Golden Week.
