A FALSE FLAG ATTACK?
Instead, it is plausible that this is a faked Russian attack. Most obviously, it would provide some justification for Russia’s war in Ukraine. That war has gone poorly. Russia can prevent a strategic defeat by continuing to fight, but victory is no longer in reach. Ukraine will survive as a sovereign, Western-leaning state, even if it loses some territory.
It is not clear, however, that Putin grasps this. He keeps fighting an unpopular, unwinnable war.
So a “terrorist attack” aimed at the Kremlin serves to boost Russian public opinion of the Ukraine invasion. Indeed, Russia’s former president and prime minister Dmitri Medvedev said that the attack left Moscow with no other option “than the physical elimination of Zelenskyy and his clique”. In other words, the war must continue.
Putin has been suspected of false flag attacks before. In 1999, a series of ostensibly Chechen terrorist bombings in Russia rallied Russian public opinion behind Putin, who had just become prime minister.
These attacks led to another military operation in Chechnya, which in turn bolstered Putin’s contentious ascension to the presidency in 2000. For decades, questions have lingered over the bombings, with widespread belief that Russian security services were responsible, working to fortify the position of their new leader.
UKRAINE DOESN’T STAND TO BENEFIT FROM DRONE STRIKE
On the Ukrainian side, there are reasons to believe that this was not an assassination attempt by Kyiv. First, assassinations are frowned upon in the West. In fact, they are illegal in the United States.
Source: CNA
