The only indisputable facts about Wednesday's incident in the Kremlin are that two explosions went off at around 2:30 a.m. on Russia's most important political and cultural symbol, and that both Moscow and Ukraine reacted with outrage
.
But whose outrage was real and whose was feigned?
In this war, the battle over the narrative is just as important as the battle on the ground.
Screenshot from a video showing an explosion near the dome of the Senate Palace in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Photo Ostorozhno Novosti, via Reuters.
While the
Kremlin
frequently lies and uses its powerful government-controlled media to create alternate realities, Ukraine has also proven adept at
twisting
the truth to serve its war interests.
Deciphering the competing
narratives
to get to the truth can be difficult, and perhaps that is what it is.
Both parties win when their intentions and methods remain obscured by the fog.
Was the apparent drone strike a bold, but largely symbolic, move by Ukraine to embarrass President
Vladimir Putin,
who is preparing to lead the annual Victory Day parade in Red Square next week?
Was it a
staged Russian provocation
to justify even harsher attacks against the Ukrainian population, or perhaps against the Ukrainian leadership?
Or was he executed not by any government, but by local Russian partisans opposed to the war, or by unscrupulous Ukrainian saboteurs?
Russia angrily accused Ukraine of trying to assassinate Putin with a drone strike and claimed its right to retaliate.
On Thursday, Putin's spokesman,
Dmitry Peskov
, repeatedly said in a conference call with reporters that the United States had ordered the attack, without offering any proof.
"We know well that decisions about such actions and such terrorist acts are not taken in kyiv, but in Washington," he said.
US officials vehemently denied any involvement.
On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, John F. Kirby, head of communications for the White House National Security Council, said: "Peskov is lying, pure and simple."
Ukraine also denied trying to hit the Kremlin and accused Moscow of fabricating a provocative incident to garner domestic support and justify the escalation.
A Ukrainian attack on the Russian government headquarters would be a bold act.
But the Kremlin did not say anything about it for 12 hours.
When the press service finally accused Ukraine, it did so in an
unusually detailed statement,
suggesting that it was eager for the episode to get maximum public exposure.
That triggered a flurry of public denials in Kiev, as well as some private headaches from Ukrainian officials, who are usually quick to wink and nod to indicate their association with bold and creative covert operations.
They pointed out that the explosions were too small to accomplish much.
"Nice but ineffective, unfortunately," a senior Ukrainian official said when asked about the attack shortly after the Kremlin issued its statement.
"At the moment I do not know who did it. It seems that it was not ours."
Someone knows what really happened, but no one, for now, speaks.
More than a day later, no new information has surfaced that could clarify who was behind the explosions, but that hasn't stopped inflammatory statements and wild speculation from flourishing.
On Thursday, the Russian authorities continued to redouble their efforts.
The Foreign Ministry issued a lengthy statement stating that those guilty of carrying out what it called "terrorist attacks" would face "severe and unavoidable punishment."
In this case, both Ukraine and Russia had the means and the motives to carry out the attack.
In more than 14 months of war, Ukraine has become adept at brazen actions loaded with symbolic meaning.
Last spring's attack that sank Russia's Black Sea flagship the Moskva did little to stop Russia's relentless attacks on Ukraine, but it was a deeply humiliating setback for the Russian military.
The explosion last summer of the only bridge linking Russian territory to the occupied Crimea slowed the transport of military supplies for a brief period, but dealt another embarrassing blow to Putin, whose forces had
failed
to protect an important strategic asset far from the front lines.
Ukraine has spent the war developing deadly drones that have terrified troops on the battlefield and struck far behind enemy lines.
In December, Ukraine sent modified
explosive drones
hundreds of kilometers into Russian territory to attack two military bases, damaging planes and killing several soldiers.
In these cases and others, Ukrainian officials have not publicly taken responsibility, although they have often not outright denied Ukrainian involvement.
Unofficially, senior officials sometimes acknowledge that their forces have been involved.
Wednesday's episode was different.
High officials, from President Volodymyr Zelensky to the last,
immediately and unequivocally denied this.
"Ukraine has nothing to do with the drone strikes against the Kremlin," said Mykhailo Podolyak, Zelenskyy's adviser.
"It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't provide any military, informational or tactical effect on the eve of an offensive."
The quick and firm denials may have meaning, but the meaning is left open to speculation.
Podolyak suggested that the explosions were actually a Kremlin false flag operation - intended to make it appear that Ukraine was to blame - to justify a possible large-scale attack aimed at undermining Ukraine's expected counter-offensive.
He did not explain why Moscow would need such justification.
Putin's army has been launching massive attacks and killing civilians since the start of the war without feeling the need to come up with elaborate excuses.
The US embassy in Kiev warned late on Wednesday that there was an increased risk of Russian missile attacks, and on Thursday the Ukrainian military said it had shot down missiles and drones over Kiev and Odessa.
Zelensky contrasted the explosions in the Kremlin, which Putin's press service described as a terrorist attack, with attacks by the Russian army on Ukrainian cities on the same day.
While Russian authorities claimed that the explosions in Moscow caused no injuries, Zelenskyy shared gruesome photos of civilians killed after a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, which killed at least 23 people in a grocery
store
. groceries and a train station, among other civilian targets.
"We will never forgive the guilty," Zelensky said in a post on Instagram.
"We will defeat the rogue state and hold all those responsible accountable."
The Kremlin, of course, is adept at deception and has never been reluctant to promote
outright lies.
Putin's stated justification for his invasion—that Ukraine was ruled by a Nazi junta committed to violence against Russia—was fabricated.
Last week, a report on Russian state television describing a Ukrainian attack on a Russian-controlled city used footage that was actually of a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Uman, which killed more than 20 people. .
Russia uses these kinds of
distortions
to promote an alternate reality that justifies its actions in the war, both to its own people and to its allies, experts say.
Russian officials have already used the Kremlin incident to call for retaliation.
Dmitri Medvedev
, the bombastic ex-Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation - who usually expresses the most extreme versions of possible Russian actions - said that the explosions justified the "physical elimination"
of
Zelensky and "his clique". .
As if that were not enough, he added a reference to
Adolf Hitler.
Explaining the 12-hour lag between the explosions and the Kremlin announcement, Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Russian spy services needed to conduct an investigation first.
Putin was working in the Kremlin on Thursday, Peskov said, and would not make any special statement about the blasts.
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