Did Ukraine Target Vladimir Putin in Drone Attack? What We Know

A drone recently found near Moscow may be linked to an attempted assassination on Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports said on Thursday, April 27.

"The 17 kilograms of explosives were meant to kill Putin," read headlines from Ukrainian and German media outlets that were widely cited on social media.

Throughout the Russia-Ukraine war there have been reports of Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky being a target of assassination attempts by Russian forces, as confirmed by the secretary of Ukraine's National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov. There were also reports of alleged attempts on Putin's life, though these have not been confirmed by officials in Moscow and could not be independently verified.

Is there any truth behind these most recent claims? Newsweek Misinformation Watch dug deeper into the story.

The widely cited claim that a Ukrainian drone was purportedly sent to eliminate the Russian president appears to stem from a single news story, which was published by the German tabloid Bild on Wednesday morning.

Headlined "17 kilos of explosives were supposed to kill Putin," the story includes a number of caveats that undermine this narrative.

The authors cite "BILD research" as the main basis for the conclusion that the Ukrainian secret service tried to "kill" Putin.

"Accordingly, a UJ-22 drone took off in Ukraine on Sunday afternoon. It is the most modern Ukrainian medium-range drone with a range of up to 800 kilometers. Their goal: a newly built industrial park near Moscow—500 kilometers from Ukraine!" the report states in German, according to a Google translation.

But the Bild report itself (archived here) appears to be based on a single-source claim: a Twitter post by Ukrainian journalist and founder of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, Yuriy Romanenko, who, Bild says, has "close ties to Kyiv's intelligence services." Romanenko himself provides no convincing evidence to suggest his affiliation with—or indeed inside knowledge of—Ukraine's security apparatus.

"Last week our intelligence officers received information about Putin's trip to the Rudnevo industrial park. Accordingly, our kamikaze drone took off, which flew through all the air defenses of the Russian Federation and crashed not far from the industrial park," Bild writes, citing, in part, Romanenko's tweet from April 24.

In the post, Romanenko says Putin's plans to visit the industrial park were "indirectly confirmed" by the Kremlin insider Pavel Zarubin, citing a Telegram post from April 23. But Zarubin's post merely notes that visiting "one of Moscow's industrial parks" was in Putin's schedule for this week, without specifying the name, location or time Putin intended to visit said park.

The German publication concedes that the Telegram post didn't specify exact timing of the expected visit, but notes that "passers-by published photos from the Rudnevo industrial park on Sunday afternoon, which showed a gray lawn in front of the main building that had also been sprayed with green paint."

While Russian media in the past has reported local authorities going out of their way to make Russian cities look "presentable" for presidential visits, that in itself cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that the lawn painting was carried out for Putin's benefit.

The article goes on to say that the crash was near the village of Voroskogo, east of Moscow, but clarifies that it was "about 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles) east of the Rudnevo Industrial Park"—hardly a precise hit for an assassination attempt.

Official statements also poured cold water on these reports, with the Kremlin spokesman first denying that Putin had any major public appearances planned in the coming week, and later directly addressing the Bild report, calling it "a tabloid hoax."

Kremlin denials on occasion have proven to be misleading or verifiably false in the past, and Romanenko goes as far as to suggest that Putin's outings were "canceled" precisely because of the drone strike. However, the claim is speculative and he offers no evidence to support it.

Similarly, even if Bild had spoken to sources in the Ukrainian security apparatus, their comment ought not be taken at face value—it could be part of the ongoing information warfare surrounding the conflict.

For example, a video recently shared by Ukrainian officials and pro-Ukraine channels, purported to show a Ukrainian drone "flying over the Kremlin." But, even as it may have been merely an attempt to troll Moscow, the clip was misleadingly edited: old footage from 2016 was misrepresented to appear new and sourced from Ukrainian forces.

Additionally, the video had been cropped to square format from its original widescreen view, while camera pans and fake military drone markers were digitally added.

As Newsweek reported earlier, three downed drones have been discovered over the past few days near Moscow, with one allegedly equipped with explosives. These discoveries followed a report last month that Russian authorities spotted another drone they suspected came from Ukraine about nine miles northeast of Moscow.

Officials in Kyiv have not claimed responsibility for any of these incidents, and the fact that the drone reports have come solely from Russian state media has led to some skepticism. Some commentators questioned whether it was overly "convenient" for Moscow that these reports came amid the fallout from the Pentagon leak, which appeared to describe Ukraine's plans for attacks inside Russia.

But regardless of who was behind the string of reported drone downings or what their goal was, the claim that they represented an attempt to assassinate the Russian leader is unevidenced at best and appears to rely on a single source that does not provide any evidence of purported "inside" knowledge of such an operation.

Newsweek reached out via email to Hvylya, where Romanenko is the chief editor, as well as the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries, for comment.