Russian officials and state media breathlessly proclaimed that Ukraine launched an alleged drone strike on the Kremlin in an attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wasn’t even there. Anticipating that this incident will be perceived as Moscow’s false flag operation, the head of state-owned news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, tweeted a short thread asserting that Russia would have done it more skillfully. She concluded, “No, it wasn’t us. Unfortunately.”
Simonyan’s suspicions that Russia would be accused of staging the episode were well-founded: Moscow has more to gain from this event than Ukraine could have hoped to accomplish. For one, this is a welcome distraction from the failing invasion and an attempt to force Russians in big cities to finally feel like this war came close to home. State TV propagandists have long complained about the lackluster reception for the ongoing military recruitment that has now expanded to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Attempts to gin up public support have quickly reached a grotesque level on Vladimir Solovyov’s show, The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, where the blame for the incident was immediately attributed to the United States. First, the program broadcast a meme featuring President Joe Biden walking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the Kremlin ablaze behind them. Solovyov exclaimed: “Show the organizers! Here, look at them!”
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Solovyov didn’t stop there. The decorated propagandist outdid himself by comparing the “drone attack” that didn’t damage any property and didn’t cause any loss of life to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.
The show aired a brief clip from the May 1t briefing of U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel responding to a question about Ukraine’s drone operations. Patel said, in part: “I will let our Ukrainian partners speak to their specific operations that they decide to undertake, but I think that it’s really important for all of us here to collectively remember that there is one country that is aggressively invading, trying to erase the borders of another and that is Russia, trying to invade Ukraine, erase its borders, erase its national identity... We are going to take the steps to hold the Russian Federation accountable.”
Responding to the clip, Solovyov went ballistic: “I don’t know whom you’re able to hold accountable, fat pig, but what I know for certain is that you just justified 9/11, the destruction of the Twin Towers... We know the truth! It’s very simple: Ukrainian Nazis have attempted to assassinate the Supreme Commander of our country, which has nuclear potential.”
Solovyov’s program showcased a social media post by Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev, who advocated immediate assassination of Zelensky and his inner circle. Solovyov and his guests wholeheartedly concurred, having long advocated for the Ukrainian president to be killed.
Referring to the earlier statements of former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who said that he persuaded Putin to make a promise not to kill Zelensky, Russian political scientist Vladimir Kornilov expressed his hope that the alleged drone attack would render this guarantee null and void. He also suggested that Moscow should pull out of the deal allowing export of Ukrainian grain, since it does not benefit the Russian Federation.
State Duma member Andrey Gurulyov, a former military commander, demanded more blood and not only that of Zelensky. “We should officially declare that all of the leadership of this terrorist nation is subject to being physically eliminated. We shouldn’t be shy about it. They simply shouldn’t exist on this earth,” he argued. “Let [Zelensky] hide and never be seen in public—and still he will be eliminated. It will be the main result when he is finally destroyed. When some say, ‘If we destroy Zelensky, there will be someone else,’ we will destroy the other one too! And the third one! And the fourth one! And the fifth one! After that, no one else will want that position.”
Gurulyov also suggested: “The most important thing right now is to finally suppress their air defense systems, for our aviation to enter the territory of Ukraine and destroy it.” Solovyov chimed in, referring to Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, known as Satan II: “Can we strike it with Satan?” Gurulyov enthusiastically replied: “Yes, we can!”
The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, has become a thorn in the side of Russian propagandists as a city that Russia was unable to conquer and a symbol of Ukraine’s enduring resistance. To Solovyov, the drone incident seemed like a convenient excuse to get rid of the city and its inhabitants, once and for all. The host advocated for Kyiv to be destroyed and clarified that he wasn’t talking about nuclear strikes—perhaps to be taken seriously, considering his propensity for threatening to nuke other countries on a weekly basis. Solovyov proposed: “We should calmly notify our American colleagues that this will be a non-nuclear strike and the city of Kyiv will cease to exist.”
