Blaming US for Kremlin attack, Russia points the finger at itself
Tom Rogan
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In blaming the U.S. for the drone incursion that targeted the Kremlin, Russia is only adding credence to the idea that the whole thing was a false-flag operation.
Speaking on Thursday, Vladimir Putin’s chief spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that the U.S. “absolutely” had ordered the attack. “We know very well that decisions on such actions,” he said, “on such terrorist attacks, are not made in Kyiv. [They are made in] Washington. And Kyiv is doing what it is told to do.”
DID UKRAINE ATTACK THE KREMLIN OR DID RUSSIA?
Peskov added that Ukraine’s military plans against Russia are often not of Ukraine’s own choosing but instead “determined in Washington and then brought to Kyiv so that Kyiv fulfills them.” He concluded that “It is very important that Washington understands that we know this. And that they understand how dangerous such direct participation in the conflict is.”
This is silly stuff. White House national security spokesman John Kirby rightly told CNN that Peskov’s allegation was “ludicrous.” He went further with MSNBC, stating, “We had nothing to do with it. Peskov is just lying there, pure and simple.”
We can be confident in this U.S. denial. First, a Ukrainian attack on the Kremlin serves no U.S. interest. If Ukraine were responsible for this incident, it would have only increased the risk of direct confrontation between the West and Russia. That is exactly what the Biden administration has taken great pains to avoid so far. The White House has put significant private pressure on Ukraine to avoid strikes deep inside Russian territory, such as the August 2022 killing of a Russian ultra-nationalist. The United Kingdom has been the strategic driving force for limited Ukrainian strikes against Russian logistics nodes, but even the British are opposed to Ukrainian actions against Moscow itself.
It is also worth noting that the U.S. intelligence community likely assesses that Putin’s assassination would lead to his replacement with an even more hawkish president — security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, for example. Indeed, rather than flirting with nuclear war, the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to tolerate Russian escalations. It retreated after Russia downed a U.S. drone in international airspace, it has failed to respond robustly to the kidnapping of U.S. citizens such as Evan Gershkovich, and it has whitewashed evidence of Russian attacks on U.S. government personnel. This is hardly the record of an administration that would order Ukraine to attack the Kremlin.
For argument’s sake, however, let’s say the U.S. did order this attack. In that entirely hypothetical scenario, wouldn’t we expect the U.S. to know that Putin wouldn’t be running around the Kremlin’s halls in the middle of the night? It is not even a secret, after all, that Putin resides at a mansion in Moscow’s western suburbs.
That Russia is blaming the U.S. only hints that Russia itself was responsible for the incident. By blaming the U.S., Russia can provoke Western fears of escalation and, Moscow hopes, associated Western pressure on Ukraine to restrain its offensive action. This is a timely concern in that Ukraine is about to launch an ambitious counter-offensive.
Moreover, there is already compelling circumstantial evidence to suggest Russia did carry out this attack.
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As I noted on Wednesday, the nature of the attack, the implausible implied systemic failure of Russian air defense networks, and the enduring Russian penchant for so-called “false flag” attacks all indicate that Russia itself may have been responsible. This attack, helpfully caught on video, fuels the Kremlin’s interest in mobilizing popular support for the war in Ukraine as a struggle for national survival. This is why the Kremlin harps on about Kyiv being a revivalist Nazi movement — in the 1940s, the Nazis actually posed an existential threat to Russia. Or, as the pro-Kremlin Moskovskij Komsomolets put it on Wednesday, the drone attacks are a “wake up” call that the “enemy are at the Kremlin” gates.
Put simply, Peskov’s claims are undeserving of serious attention. Except, that is, for the further indication they provide that Putin himself was behind what just happened.