“There are very few reasons to think that it is a Ukrainian attack”, reacts a specialist

“There are very few reasons to think that it is an attack which comes from Ukraine”, reacts Wednesday May 3 on franceinfo Nicolas Tenzer, teacher at Sciences-Po, specialist in international and security issues while Moscow accuses Kiev of having attempted to assassinate Vladimir Putin and claims to have shot down two Ukrainian drones targeting the Kremlin in Moscow. For the specialist, “It can be a pretext that Russia invokes to attack in an even stronger way”.

franceinfo: How do you read the images showing a possible explosion above the Kremlin ?

Nicholas Tenzer: There’s very little reason to think it’s an attack from Ukraine. It has been denied and it is not so much the tactic of the Ukrainians. It is hard to imagine a drone covering so many kilometers without being intercepted and a fortiori in a place as sensitive as the Kremlin. So it seems very unlikely. Then, on the video, we see two people in white present at the very place where the drone was shot down a few minutes before, so it seems to be a mounted operation.

Do you think it’s staged?

I’m cautious but it looks like a staged. It can also be an exercise launched by people from the FSB or other Russian services to test something. On the accusations vis-à-vis Ukraine of having wanted to assassinate Vladimir Putin: when we know that he is almost never in the Kremlin and that he is in a protected room, a sort of bunker, in the suburb of Moscow, it is not an easy target. In addition, Ukrainians – like all Westerners – would prefer that he be tried by the International Criminal Court, which has indicted him for war crimes. So this all sounds fanciful.

If it is indeed a staging, for what purpose?

It can be a pretext that Russia invokes to attack even more forcefully. One can always imagine that they go further. Russia is hinting at a nuclear attack as a possibility, but that’s mostly part of the threats to try to dissuade the West from reacting. So we can’t see very well. Or it may be an additional effort to try to remobilize the population but it is very difficult to know today.