About a dozen explosive-laden drones were launched at Moscow Tuesday morning from a location unknown, lightly damaging some buildings and requiring the evacuation of at least one highrise. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have shot down five drones and jammed the navigation signals of three others.
“There’s a lot of significance to this area of Moscow being targeted,” reported one Twitter user. “It’s the unofficial Rublyovka district where a lot of Russian rich/elite live.”
As you can see from this and other videos uploaded to Twitter, the damage was light.
Smoke cloud rising after a drone strike against Moscow this morning. pic.twitter.com/p1DMqTTMeu
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 30, 2023
You can also see what appears to be one of the drones being shot down in this clip:
Multiple drone attack in Moscow. Ukraine denies responsibility.
What’s next?
I have just asked a former CIA Director if the US assessment of the risk of the Russia nukes has increased over time. No, he said, it has been downgraded.
What else? 1/
— Tymofiy Mylovanov (@Mylovanov) May 30, 2023
Wow. Tuesday’s drone strike was the first on the Russian capital.
Just two minor casualties have been reported, neither requiring hospitalization.
Here’s a nice view of one of the drones.
You get a very good look of the drone here. pic.twitter.com/T0UF3xc9sC
— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) May 30, 2023
Russian MOD called the insignificant strike a “terrorist attack,” even though it pales all the way into invisibility compared to what residents of Kyiv have endured this month. The city (and others) has been attacked 16 times in May, a much higher rate than in the 14 previous months.
Picking up the pace even more, residents of Kyiv spent another night sleeping in subways and bomb shelters as three waves of Russian cruise missiles and Iranian-made drones were launched at the city over a span of just 24 hours.
Ukrainian air defenses were reportedly in fine form:
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched 40 Kh-101/Kh-555 air-based cruise missiles and 38 Shahed-131/136 drones on the night of May 28 to 29 and 11 Iskander-M/K missiles during the day on May 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses destroyed in all 36 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles, 30 Shahed drones, and all 11 Iskander missiles. Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian forces intercepted all 11 Iskander missiles, and 40 cruise missiles and Shahed drones that targeted Kyiv City and Kyiv Oblast. Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces also intercepted missiles and drones near the cities of Lviv, Mykolaiv, and Odesa and that Russian forces struck port infrastructure in Odesa City and a military infrastructure facility in Khmelnytskyi Oblast.
History shows that Vladimir Putin’s bombing campaign — like Hitler’s blitz against London and Iran and Iraq’s missile war against each other’s capital cities — simply won’t have any real material effect on the war. Yet frustrated warmongers insist on trying, anyway.
Twitter also came alive Tuesday with speculation — and it is just speculation — that the attack on Moscow might have been a false-flag operation. Much of the chatter was generated by this audio clip of Wagner mercenary organization chief Yevgeny Prigozhin absolutely going off on the Russian military for allowing the attack.
“You a**holes, get your a**es out of the offices you were put in to defend this country,” was one of Prigozhin’s nicer statements.
Here’s the clip — and an accompanying conspiracy theory — courtesy of milblogger “Tendar.”
I have been seeing those drone videos in Moscow and I was thinking something feels off.
But hearing Prigozhin “exploding” makes me wonder whether neither Ukraine nor the Kremlin are responsible for this but somebody in Russia with ambition, like him.pic.twitter.com/gI8bUL1dv5
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) May 30, 2023
Tendar’s theory is definitely out there. Others speculate that the drone attack was another one of Putin’s false flags to drum up support after 15-plus months of heavy fighting and little to show for it.
Whatever you think of the conspiracy theories (I don’t think much of them at all), the war has entered an exasperating phase. Moscow’s winter/spring offensive has ended with little to show for it but one unimportant place that used to be a town, and Kyiv’s summer offensive has yet to really begin. So the people of Ukraine endure Putin’s missiles while doing what they can to remind the people of Moscow that they’re at war, too.
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