May 3 (UPI) — The Russian government claimed Wednesday two drones targeted the Kremlin overnight in an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin press service said Putin was unharmed in the attack and his work schedule would continue as usual.
Putin was in St. Petersburg on Tuesday approving tram traffic in Mariupol via video link and celebrating the 70th birthday of Russian composer Valery Gergiev, Russian state-run news agency TASS reported.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin is in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow meeting the governor of Nizhny Novgorod.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
The Kremlin press service claimed the drones had been intercepted by Russian electronic countermeasures.
“As a result of timely actions taken by military and special services using electronic warfare systems, the drones were disabled,” the press service said. “Their fall and the fragments scattered around on the territory of the Kremlin caused no casualties or material damage.”
Moscow and Kyiv are both preparing to mark the victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, which is celebrated on May 9.
The Presidential press service’s statement called the strikes “a pre-planned act of terrorism and an attempt on the life of the Russian president, which took place just before the Victory Day and the May 9 parade that will be attended by foreign guests.”
The Presidential press service threatened retaliation, saying “Russia reserves the right to take retaliatory measures whenever and wherever it sees fit.”
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied Ukrainian involvement on Twitter and implied “local resistance forces” were behind the attack.
“First of all, Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Podolyak tweeted Wednesday.
“The emergence of unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles at energy facilities or on the Kremlin’s territory can only indicate the guerilla activities of local resistance forces” said Podolyak.
Ukraine has a policy of denying strikes inside Russian territory.
On Saturday, a fire broke out at an oil facility in Russian-occupied Crimea, which pro-Russian officials blamed on a Ukrainian drone strike.
Separately, a fire broke out at a fuel depot near the Kerch Bridge in Russian-occupied Crimea Wednesday, Russian-appointed regional governor Veniamin Kondratiev wrote on Telegram.
“The fire has been assigned the highest level of severity. According to preliminary information, there are no victims,” he wrote.
