Ukraine attempted to assassinate Putin with killer drone: claims

Ukraine purportedly attempted to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin with a killer drone — but it crashed short of its high-profile target, a report claims.

Unidentified sources claimed that the Ukrainian secret service launched a UJ-22 drone loaded with C4 explosives on Sunday, the German newspaper Bild reported. The drone was allegedly intended to target the Rudnevo Industrial Park, where Putin was expected to visit either Sunday or Monday. Instead, the outlet said, it exploded about 12 miles away, on the outskirts of Voroskogo.

Photos published by Bild purportedly show the wreckage of the device in a wooded area.

Ukrainian activist Yuriy Romanenko also claimed on Twitter a day after the drone crash that the country’s intelligence “had received information about Putin’s trip,” and that “our guys launched a kamikaze drone that flew through all the air defences of the Russian Federation and fell not far from the industrial park,” according to a translation by the German publication. Romanenko said Putin’s planned visit to the park was indirectly confirmed by a Kremlin spokesperson on Telegram on Sunday.

Another indication, Bild noted, was a video tweeted by a private citizen that appeared to show the campus’s grass sprayed green ahead of the former KGB strongman’s visit.

A separate Telegram account, however, later posted that Putin planned to spend the day working in the Kremlin.

Romanenko — who reportedly has ties to Ukrainian intelligence — speculated that the change of plans represented an official scramble to cover up the possible disaster.

“When in the morning it became known about the drone in the Kremlin, a real commotion began,” he alleged.

“Considering how much Putin is obsessed with his own security, this story could have huge implications for the Kremlin towers.”

Bild’s unproven allegations surfaced one day after Russian officials confirmed an explosion near the site of an old thermal power station in Pavlovsk, about 19 miles from St. Petersburg.

“Currently, the site of the incident is being examined, and all the circumstances of the incident are being established,” the Investigate Committee wrote on Telegram.
Russian pro-war bloggers suggested that Ukraine targeted the area due to its proximity to an air base, the Daily Beast reported. 

Also on Thursday, one person was reported killed and over 20 injured following a Russian missile strike on a residential block in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video capturing the smoking, crumbling buildings scattered with shattered glass.

Ukraine is reportedly getting aid from the FBI to investigate alleged Russian war crimes since the invasion over one year ago.

“Collection of that data, analysis of that data, working through that data is something the FBI has experience working through,” special agent Alex Kobzanets said of the process at a recent conference. (NYP)