MOSCOW: Russia said on Thursday that the United States was behind what it says was a drone attack on the Kremlin that aimed to kill President Vladimir Putin, while Moscow’s forces fired more combat drones at Ukrainian cities including the capital Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaking in The Hague after visiting the International Court of Justice (ICC), said that Putin must be brought to justice over the war and said Kyiv would work to create a new tribunal for this purpose.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, without providing evidence, said Ukraine had acted on US orders with the alleged drone attack on the Kremlin citadel in the early hours of Wednesday.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Peskov was “just lying” and said the United States neither encouraged nor enabled Ukraine to strike outside its borders. He added it was still unclear what had happened at the Kremlin.
Kyiv has also denied involvement in the incident, which followed a string of blasts over the past week targeting freight trains and oil depots in western Russia and Russian-controlled Crimea. Moscow has blamed Ukraine for those attacks too.
“Attempts to disown this (attack on the Kremlin), both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous. We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv but in Washington,” Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said an urgent investigation was underway and that any response would be carefully considered and balanced.
Separately, Russia’s foreign ministry said the alleged drone attack “must not go unanswered” and that it showed Kyiv had no desire to end the 15-month-old war at the negotiating table.
Russia has increasingly accused the United States of being a direct participant in the war, intent on inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Moscow. Washington denies this, saying it is arming Kyiv to defend itself and retake land illegally taken by Moscow. –Agencies
