Kremlin Rejects German Media’s ‘Putin Drone Assassination’ Report

The German tabloid Bild on Wednesday published a story titled “17 kilos of explosives intended to kill Putin” – which alleged that Sunday’s Ukrainian drone crash near Moscow had been part of an assassination operation to kill the Russian president. The downed drone was found in a forest Monday, according to AFP.

Bild further alleged there is a Kremlin cover-up in progress, given the ability of the kamikaze drone to penetrate that deep into Russian territory and crash near where Putin was expected to visit. But the Kremlin has rejected the report as fake news and part of Kiev’s “fabrications”. 

The drone allegedly reached a distance of some 500km from the Ukrainian border, but it wasn’t the first time a Ukrainian drone was able to travel that distance inside Russia. 

The Bild report described further:

Ukrainian activist Yuriy Romanenko , who is said to have close ties to Kiev’s intelligence services, said in a letter claiming responsibility: “Last week our intelligence officers received information about Putin’s trip to the industrial park in Rudnevo. Accordingly, our kamikaze drone took off, which flew through all the air defenses of the Russian Federation and crashed not far from the industrial park.”

And more via a machine translation of the German article: “Several private Russian media reported a UJ-22 drone crash near the village of Voroskogo, east of Moscow. The crash site is about 20 kilometers east of the Rudnevo Industrial Park.”

There’s also the dubious claim of US-supplied explosives carried by the drone. 

Recordings show that there were 30 C4 explosive blocks with a total weight of 17 kilograms on board the drone. The explosive charges of the type M112 are used by the US Army and the armed forces of Canada, among others

Pro-Ukraine social media channels have used the incident to claim Ukraine’s drones can get ‘close’ to Russian leaders; however, the Kremlin has rejected all of this as a fiction.

Bild published the following map of the drone’s flight path…

Putin’s press spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said there was no assassination attempt on the president, dismissing the allegations as “yellow fabrications.”

When asked about the Bild report by journalists on Friday, Peskov responded: “No, we are not familiar with these reports,” and stressed “There are many such ‘yellow fabrications’ these days. There’s no reason to pay them any mind.”

The only documented attempted drone assassination against a head of state was the 2018 televised incident while Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has giving an outdoor speech in the center of Caracas.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro escaped a drone ‘attack’ unharmed. The leader is calling it an assassination attempt. pic.twitter.com/KI5zmQ3Rai

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 5, 2018

While Maduro had called it a failed plot as part of US-backed coup efforts, there were many different theories at the time, including speculation that it could have been an ‘inside job’ – or a government stunt that would allow Maduro to crackdown on the political opposition and denounce its Washington backers.