Drone attack on Kremlin to ‘assassinate’ Putin likely launched from inside Russia, experts say

The drones that crashed over the Kremlin on Wednesday, dodging an extensive number of defenses.

In and around Moscow, suggested that they might have been launched from inside Russia, US-based drone experts said.

Russia, on Wednesday, claimed that Ukraine had attacked the Kremlin in Moscow with drones meant to assassinate President Vladimir Putin. Denying any role in the attack on the Kremlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s press secretary said they have no information about the “so-called night attacks on the Kremlin”.

Baza, a Telegram channel with links to Russia’s law enforcement agencies, was among the first to post a video showing a flying object approaching the dome of the Kremlin’s Senate building overlooking Red Square, the site of the Victory Day parade. It exploded into smoke and fire before reaching the sprawling red fortress.

Governments and open source intelligence analysts are hunting for the origin of the drones designed to fly to a destination and explode.

President of the non-profit Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation which advocates for tougher and redundant GPS, Dana Goward, said that Moscow has been very concerned about protecting the Kremlin from drones since at least 2015 when it began using electronic countermeasures to automatically direct them away by “spoofing” GPS locations.

“Spoofing” occurs when a counterfeit GPS signal is sent to replace a legitimate one, electronically fooling guidance systems on drones or other devices, news agency Reuters reported.

Goward believed that the drones used were mid-sized and “was likely not using GPS but was either manually controlled – suggesting a nearby launch – or just pointed and set upon a path, kamikaze style.”