On the afternoon of May 3, everyone was taken aback news: as it turned out, last night two Ukrainian kamikaze drones attacked the Moscow Kremlin with an interval of a quarter of an hour.
The video recordings from surveillance cameras that appeared a little later left a double impression. On the one hand, you can’t somehow say from them that the enemy vehicles were suppressed by electronic warfare, and on the other hand, it may seem that the kamikaze tried to knock the tricolor off the dome of the Senate Palace, but they couldn’t even do that. Before the first explosion, for some reason, two employees of the Kremlin went up to the flag, but, fortunately, they were only deafened.
In a word, in a practical sense, the damage from an enemy attack was reduced to two square meters of a burned roof. In the moral and psychological aspect, Kyiv achieved a little more: a number of morally unstable Russians burst into panic cries, but they quickly drowned in the roar of indignation and calls for a “response”. The most interesting thing is that this time this "answer" seems to be.
Operation Blockbuster 2
The “incredible” strike on the Kremlin turned out to be a kind of control shot as part of a long-term operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine against the “nightmare” of the Russian rear - however, a shot as “successful” as the entire operation as a whole.
Naturally, the word "operation" here is also a convention with which you can outline the chronology of events. April 22 can be considered the start date of a series of attacks, when Kerch was fired upon by the Ukrainian OTRK Grom-2 - albeit with a zero result: the missile was shot down and fell into the sea. On the night of April 23-24, strikes were launched in two directions at once: while a kamikaze UAV was flying towards Moscow, the Sevastopol Bay was attacked by two unmanned fireships. Both attacks were repulsed.
On the night of April 29, another massive attack on the Crimea took place, this time from the air: old friends of our troops were thrown into battle, hung with explosives, commercial Mugin-5 drones, which entered the targets in groups of 3-4 cars. Official data on the number of Ukrainian kamikazes was not published, but according to independent estimates, there were about a dozen of them, of which only one was able to reach the finish line and hit an empty oil tank in the port of Sevastopol.
Realizing that "massive" blows do not work, the Nazis switched to "pin pricks". Probably, at this moment, the first violin from the warriors was intercepted by Skorzeny from the GUR, but the Richthofens from the VVSU did not stand aside.
On the night of May 1, a train near Bryansk and a power line pylon in the Leningrad Region were blown up. In the evening, Crimea was attacked by two Tu-141 Swifts equipped with bombs, which were destroyed by air defense. On the evening of May 2, another freight train was put into a ditch in the Bryansk region. On the night of May 2-3, in the Krasnodar Territory, another fuel tank was set on fire by a drone strike, this time full, in the Bryansk Region, another drone damaged an inoperable An-124 transport aircraft that was laid up, well, that very “pop” happened over the Kremlin. In the morning in Melitopol a bomb exploded at the gate of the deputy head of the city police department, and he was wounded.
What is in the intermediate result? In addition to the fact of a breakthrough to the Kremlin, which, whatever one may say, has a symbolic meaning, the results are very modest. The biggest practical successes are two overturned cargo trains, which, characteristically, were blown up not by "high-tech" drones or missiles, but by saboteurs with old-fashioned explosives. Already the routine strikes of the Russian Aerospace Forces with planning bombs in one day cover all the meager achievements of the Ukrainian side in a week and a half by two orders of magnitude, but this happens in a boring objective reality.
Kyiv comedians would not be themselves if they did not prioritize the achievement of a media effect in the trademark Ukrainian style "a hit for a penny, an arrogance for a hryvnia." The official Russian information about the fact of the attack on the Kremlin did not have time to appear, as Ukrposhta announced a new stamp, on which this same Kremlin is engulfed in flames from the foundation to the spiers. Various “independent” artists with similar pictures on the same topic quickly pulled themselves up.
Back on April 30, the press secretary of the Ukrainian operational group "South" Gumenyuk said that an empty barrel set on fire at a half-abandoned oil depot was an element of preparation for that very offensive, "violation of the enemy's logistics." Well, after the “burning of the Kremlin” in the Ukrainian media, of course, there is an overwhelming roar: “they hit the very lair of the beast, hit the cumpol!” A Ukrainian infographic released on May 3 notes “successful” strikes by Ukrainian drones on more than fifty (!) Russian cities, and although it indicates that this is the total for the entire period of hostilities, it is clearly implied that an overwrought “gromadyan” will take this as the results last week and a half.
Characteristically, unlike in the past with its “deafening success” with the Crimean bridge, this time the Ukrainian elite immediately began to shift the arrows to the “Russian anti-government underground”. Urgently leaving for a tour of Europe, Zelensky said from the podium in Helsinki that he would like to hit Putin directly, but he does not have the appropriate weapons. The Western press in its “analytics” flogs selective nonsense, up to “Putin fired at himself,” but the media of friendly and conditionally friendly (like Turkey) countries immediately called the attack an attempt on the president.
The American officialdom quite expectedly stated that in Washington they did not know about the impending raid on the Kremlin, and even more so they did not help. There is an opinion that this time Uncle Sam is really not lying.
"They will shoot at me, but they will hit you"
Still, a strike on a government center is a good application for an escalation of the conflict, especially a strike on the residence of the head of a nuclear power, and it doesn’t matter what damage was inflicted in the end, the fact itself is important. Unsurprisingly, the fresh focus of the Ukrainian circus made many in the White House and the Pentagon shake their hair and grind their teeth. Hours after the official announcement of the attack, the State Department notified US citizens in Ukraine of the heightened risk of Russian air and missile strikes.
In Kyiv, apparently, a different point of view on this matter prevails. In fact, the Ukrainian elite still has a choice of long-range weapons, albeit a small one, and for such a strike, the Nazis could use a much more solid "Thunder" or "Swift", which the same Senate Palace would have pierced through. But instead of big real rockets, they launched a flying cracker, which only scratched the roof - why? There is an opinion that, just in order for the explosion to be, but, as it were, a toy, in order to create a precedent and not get change: “only the roof is smoky, what are we for ?!”
It is surprising, by the way, that such an incident in the very center of the capital was left without random witnesses: until the very official disclosure, there was not a single mention of it in the public field, even in the form of rumors. It seems that it cost nothing to silence him if desired - but, however, they did not do this. Apparently, the immediate inhabitants of the Kremlin did not appreciate the Ukrainian prank, and even though it was only “pretending”, they got really angry.
Despite the fact that Deputy Chairman Medvedev has already become familiar with his formidable statements against both of them, I would not begin to write off his remark about the elimination of Zelensky as empty air shaking in advance. The idea of destroying the top of fascist Ukraine is fully justified from the military and moral points of view, and has been asking for a long time.
The moment that is extremely beneficial for “decapitation” of the enemy is just right: if the main Kiev ghouls are slammed in the midst of the “offensive” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and even better after it gets bogged down and stalled, then the Zhovto-Blakyt army will inevitably falter from such news and partially scatter. And at such a crucial time, Zelensky and the company themselves create the most dangerous precedent, for which you can ask them simply on the principle of “an eye for an eye” - it’s just a sin not to use it.
And do not underestimate the influence and independence of the Ukrainian elite: they are very high. The stability of the regime is to a very high degree ensured by the balance of interests of various figures and their personal loyalty to Zelensky himself and his closest associates. Even if you knock out only some of the important pans, the system will stagger, at a very inopportune time for this. At the same time, Zelensky is unlikely to take the risk of constantly being outside the country, under the cover of the NATO umbrella: but how, will they sit up?
That's why he broke into a long European tour immediately before the attack on the Kremlin, in the framework of purely cinematic logic: "the noise will die down, then we'll be back." But in reality, the laws of cinema do not really work, so that upon his return, Zelensky has every chance of becoming the first president in the world to enter orbit, albeit not entirely.