Ukraine war live updates: Russia says it will respond to Kremlin drone ‘attack’; Ukraine says drone incident was staged

A political adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Russia staged a drone attack on the Kremlin that Moscow blamed on Kyiv. 

Ukraine has already vehemently denied any involvement in the incident, which Russia characterized as a “planned terrorist attack” and assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Ukrainian official, voiced further doubts over the purported “attack” on Twitter Thursday, stating that video footage of the “attack” — which showed two unidentified figures on the roof of the Kremlin’s Senate building as a drone explodes above it — was suspicious, as was the 12-hour delay between the alleged incident and the Kremlin’s announcement on it.

Podolyak said that, in contrast, the shelling of the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday that left 23 civilians dead was all too real.

Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson regional military administration, said Thursday morning that Russia shelled the wider region 98 times over the previous 24 hours, and that residential areas of the region were targeted. Russia denies targeting civilians, despite daily strikes on civilian infrastructure.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said Wednesday that Russia will respond to an alleged drone attack on the Kremlin “when we consider it necessary.”

The Kremlin blamed the “attack” on Ukraine yesterday, calling it an assassination attempt on Russian President Putin, but did not present evidence to back up its allegations. Kyiv denied any involvement in the incident.

“How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol or the Pentagon? The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for an average citizen: the punishment will be harsh and inevitable,” Antonov said, according to comments published by Russian state news agency Tass.

“Russia will respond to this insolent and presumptuous terrorist attack. We will answer when we consider it necessary. We will answer in accordance with the assessments of the threat that Kiev posed to the leadership of our country.”

Ukraine denied any involvement in an alleged drone attack which the Kremlin alleges Kyiv carried out in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Some Western analysts believe it’s likely that Russia staged the “attack” itself as a possible “false flag” attack, and to bolster its portrayal of Ukraine as a “terrorist” state. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia’s report should be taken with a “very large shaker of salt.”

Antonov hit back at those responses, saying U.S. officials had been “striking in their cynicism and absurdity.”

“The theses that this act of terrorism was allegedly a ‘false flag operation’ are blasphemous and deceitful. That is, it was Russia itself that staged a provocation against the heart of our statehood?!,” Antonov said.

The ambassador did not detail how Russia might “respond” to the incident but claimed it showed Ukraine did not want peace.

“Our adversaries have no desire to seek peace, to save thousands of lives of ordinary Ukrainians. Definitely, we will take this circumstance into account while working out our strategy to implement the goals and objectives of the special military operation,” Antonov said.

— Holly Ellyatt

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and the port city of Odesa were targeted in further attempted drone strikes overnight, Ukrainian officials said.

Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said on Telegram that the capital had been targeted again with drones and missiles, marking the “third attack on the capital over four days of May.”

“Our city has not suffered such a dense intensity of strikes since the beginning of this year,” Popko said. The air raid alert in Kyiv lasted over three hours last night. Popko said the drones and missiles were destroyed, although the debris from destroyed drones damaged some buildings and parked cars. No casualties were reported, he said.

Separately, Ukraine’s southern command grouping said 12 out of 15 drones used to attack Odesa overnight were destroyed.

Ukraine’s air force said it destroyed 18 out of 24 Iranian-made “Shahed-136/131 combat drones” that were launched overnight by Russia from its Western Bryansk region, and from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov. The drones were shot down in the northern, central, and southern regions of Ukraine, it said. 

CNBC was unable to immediately verify the details within the reports.

— Holly Ellyatt

Russia accused Ukraine of attempting to attack the Kremlin Wednesday, saying the government in Kyiv tried to strike the presidential residence in Moscow using two unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.

Ukraine denied any involvement in the incident, saying it more likely signaled that Russia was planning a large-scale terrorist attack against Ukraine in the coming days. Russia has often been accused of plotting “false flag” attacks that it can blame on Ukraine and use to justify or escalate its own military aggression against the country.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War said Wednesday evening that “Russia likely staged this attack in an attempt to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”

Several indicators suggest that the strike was internally conducted and purposefully staged, the ISW noted, not least of all because Russia has recently taken steps to increase its domestic air defense capabilities and it was extremely unlikely “that two drones could have penetrated multiple layers of air defense and detonated or been shot down just over the heart of the Kremlin in a way that provided spectacular imagery caught nicely on camera.”

In addition, the ISW said it believes that the Kremlin’s “immediate, coherent, and coordinated response” to the incident suggests that the attack “was internally prepared in such a way that its intended political effects outweigh its embarrassment.”

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not injured in what it characterized as “a planned terrorist attack” and assassination attempt (Putin had not been in the Kremlin at the time of the alleged incident). It did not provide any evidence that Ukraine had carried out the attack.

— Holly Ellyatt

President Joe Biden said his administration would continue to support newsrooms and journalists around the world in a statement on World Press Freedom Day.

“No journalist – American or not – should have to risk their lives and livelihoods in pursuit of that truth. Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice weigh heavy on my mind today,” Biden said.

“A free press is a pillar of democracy. It allows our government and our society to be self-critical and self-correcting. It educates, illuminates, exposes, and uncovers. It serves as a guardian of truth,” he added.

Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Moscow, was arrested more than a month ago by Russian authorities on espionage charges.

Tice, a freelance journalist and former U.S. Marine, was kidnapped in Syria in 2012 and ahs been held captive since.

— Amanda Macias

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the U.S. cannot validate Russia’s accusation that Ukraine tried to strike the Kremlin with drones overnight in an attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Reuters.

Blinken said he would take anything coming from the Kremlin with a “very large shaker of salt,” according to the report.

He also reiterated the United States’ support for Ukraine and said he feels confident that the country will be successful in its effort to retake more of its territory.

— Michele Luhn

Ukraine denied any involvement in an alleged drone attack on the Kremlin that Moscow has blamed on Kyiv.

A senior Ukrainian presidential official, Mykhailo Podolyak, said Ukraine had nothing to do with the drone strike, stating on Twitter that “Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Rather, he said the allegations suggest Russia was planning a large-scale “terrorist” attack against Ukraine in the coming days.

Serhii Nikiforov, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s spokesman, also told the Ukrainian Pravda news outlet that Kyiv was not involved in the incident.

“We have no information about the so-called night attacks on the Kremlin, but as President Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated, Ukraine directs all available forces and means to liberate its own territories, not to attack foreign ones,” he told the news outlet in comments translated by NBC News.

Nikiforov said Russia’s description of the incident as a “terrorist” attack was interesting given Russia’s repeated attacks against Ukrainian territory over the course of the war.

“A terrorist attack is the destroyed houses in Dnipro and Uman, or a rocket fired at the train station in Kramatorsk and many other tragedies. And what happened in Moscow was obviously an escalation of the situation in light of May 9,” alluding to Russia’s upcoming Victory Day parade commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

The comments come after the Kremlin claimed Wednesday that Ukraine tried to strike the Kremlin with drones overnight, but said the purported attack on the heart of the Russian government was “successfully repulsed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin was not injured in the incident, the Kremlin said. It provided no evidence to back up the claim of an attempted attack.

— Holly Ellyatt

The Kremlin claimed Wednesday that Ukraine tried to strike the Kremlin with drones overnight but said the attack on the heart of the Russian government was “successfully repulsed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin was not injured in the purported attack, which was reported by the Kremlin, which provided no evidence to back up the claim of an attempted attack, however.

“Last night, the Kyiv regime attempted to strike the Kremlin residence of the President of the Russian Federation with unmanned aerial vehicles,” the Kremlin stated, with the claim detailing that “two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin.”

“As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the devices were disabled,” the Kremlin said.

“As a result of their fall and the scattering of fragments on the territory of the Kremlin, there are no casualties and material damage.”

Putin was not injured and continues to work as usual after the Kyiv attack, it said.

The Kremlin’s statement suggested that it viewed the attempted attack as a “planned terrorist action” and an attempt on the life of the president ahead of Victory Day on May 9.

Russia was already believed to be slimming down its Victory Day parade, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in WW2, amid fears of Ukrainian strikes.

Russia reserves the right to respond to an attempt to strike at the Kremlin where and when it sees fit, the Kremlin added, without giving details on how it planned to respond.

Footage began circulating on social media channels purportedly showing what could be an unmanned aerial vehicle appearing to explode above a domed roof of one of the Kremlin’s buildings. CNBC wasn’t able to immediately verify the authenticity of the footage, however.

Ukraine has not publicly commented on the claims. NBC News has reached out to the Ukrainian government for comment but hasn’t yet received a response.

— Holly Ellyatt