Putin 'Assassination' False Flag Doesn't Make Sense: Ex-Diplomat

The theory that Wednesday's alleged drone strike on the Kremlin was a false flag concocted by Russia doesn't make sense, according to former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev.

Bondarev, Russia's only diplomat to publicly quit over Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, weighed in on what Moscow is calling a "terrorist attack" by Kyiv and an attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin's life.

Russia accused Ukraine of attempting to assassinate Putin with two drones that crashed into his Kremlin residence early on Wednesday morning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied any involvement, saying his country didn't possess weapons capable of such strikes.

It remains unclear who launched the two drones that struck the Kremlin in Moscow. The Institute for the Study of War, a United States-based think tank, said the attack was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war.

Others have assessed that such an act would be too humiliating for Putin.

Bondarev, a former member of Russia's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, resigned in May 2022, saying in an open letter that the war is "not only a crime against the Ukrainian people but also, perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia."

"It could be Ukraine or a false flag operation," Bondarev told Newsweek of the alleged drone attack. "However, if we consider false flag it is unclear what benefits [there] could be [for Russia] while negative consequences for Russia's image, etc. are obvious."

The former diplomat said he believes Ukraine carrying out the attack "is the most probable explanation."

"The drones could have been flown not necessarily from Ukraine, but by some Ukrainian people in Moscow, for example," Bondarev said.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian Foreign Ministries via email for comment.

Federico Borsari, Leonardo Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told Newsweek that overall, he tends to agree with Bondarev regarding the unlikelihood of a false flag scenario.

"If, on the one hand, a false flag adds to the justifications for further escalation in Ukraine (via new missile attacks and/or new domestic measures to expand the war economy) and aims to escalate the domestic rhetoric against Ukraine, on the other hand, it paradoxically shows the vulnerability of Russian air defenses (ADS) and indirectly confirms that Ukraine is now able to attack Moscow," Borsari said.

Borsari said that from a public reputation standpoint, this is not favorable.

"So, at the end of the day, a false flag, though plausible, risks being more counterproductive than useful," he said.

"I'd bet my money on Ukraine or pro-Ukraine elements within Russia," said Borsari, noting that for Ukraine, this would not be the first such attack.

"Kyiv's forces have already used relatively small fixed-wing UAS to strike deep within Russian territory," he said, explaining that in the summer of 2022, Ukraine hit an oil refinery in the Russia's Rostov region using a weaponized commercial Mugin-5 Pro drone available on Alibaba for less than $10,000.

Other similar attacks using both military-grade and modified commercial drones have targeted oil depots in Crimea and other border regions of Russia in the past few weeks, he said.

"The attack on the Kremlin follows a consolidated pattern and shows not only that Ukraine has the capabilities to strike high-value targets in Russia, which is a huge propaganda boost, but also that Russian air defenses are vulnerable.

"The inflection point will come when Ukraine will be able to conduct these attacks at scale, mirroring what Russia is doing with Iranian-made Shahed-136 slow-flying munitions."

Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow and advisor at the Center for a New American Security, who posted footage of the alleged attack on Twitter, told Newsweek that lots of details are still unclear, but said the drones used "may" be Chinese-made Mugin-5s, "which Ukraine used before for striking Crimea" or Ukraine's own UJ-22 long-range drone.

Several military observers have expressed doubts about the incident being a "false flag."

"Personally, my gut feeling again is that this was not a false-flag (although I am not saying there is conclusive evidence)," tweeted Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical and security analyst and head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a specialist risk management and business resilience consultancy company.

"Again this is too humiliating, and not what the Russia leadership would chose [sic] to drum support. And Russia is pretty much already up the escalation ladder," Horowitz wrote in his Thursday tweet.

He added in a second tweet: "If Russia wanted to foster support for mobilization, it would use actual terror attacks in my opinion (and they have a track record of doing so). I am not sure Russian men will rush to the conscription office just because a flag got almost knocked out."

Twitter user Dmitri of the War Translated project, an independent project concerned with translating various materials about the war in Ukraine, agreed.

"I mean, [in my opinion] it's too embarrassing to be a false flag where Russia kamikazes the Kremlin like this. That ain't gonna sit well with regular Russians. Obv Ukraine says it was not them, so there's that. I guess we have to see what the outcome will be (if any)," he tweeted on Wednesday.

Bondarev previously told Newsweek that Ukraine must strike legitimate targets inside Russia to win the war.

"You cannot win the war if you don't hit your enemy," Bondarev said in a phone interview from Switzerland in February. "Of course, [Ukraine] must not hit civilian targets like Russia does in Ukraine."

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Update 05/04/23, 11:48 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Federico Borsari.