Putin uses the alleged attack on the Kremlin to pass a death sentence on Zelensky

Ukrainian President, Volodimir Zelensky, whom this alleged assault has caught on a trip to Finland, has denied being involved in the incident. “We do not attack Putin or Moscow. We leave that to the courts. We fight on our territory. We defend our cities and towns,” he ruled before accusing Russia of trying to use what happened as an excuse to launch “an attack on big scale”. To kyiv it has been of no use to deny authorship: for Moscow it is the direct culprit and, therefore, “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it deems appropriate”, as announced by the Russian Government.

Vice President of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has gone a step further, and has urged the “physical elimination of Zelenski and his clique” after what he considers a “terrorist attack” that has been neutralized. According to the former Russian president, popular for his out-of-tune statements, they do not need the Ukrainian leader “to sign the unconditional surrender”, nor did they need to “Hitler signed”. Along these lines, Medvedev added that “there will always be someone who takes his place in the style of President and Admiral (Karl) Dönitz”, who inherited the leadership of the Third Reich and signed the surrender of Germany in World War II.

[Ucrania cruza el Dniéper y establece una cabeza de playa frente a Jersón como primer paso hacia Crimea]

The march of the Immortal Regiment

Beyond the rhetoric with which Moscow has tried to justify its invasion of Ukraine from the beginning and which is based on describing Ukrainians as Nazis, the comparison between Zelensky and the German dictator is not arbitrary. Neither is that alleged drone attack just in a delicate moment: next Tuesday, May 9, the Russians celebrate the victory day. This holiday commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazism in Europe. That day, the country is filled with parades and songs in what is a great patriotic celebration.

This year, however, the party it will be decaf. In several regions, such as Kursk and Belgorod, which border Ukraine, or in the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, there will be no celebration. Traditional marches, such as that of the Immortal Regiment, the central pillar of the day in which citizens parade with portraits of relatives who died in World War II, will have “a different format.” And it is that the authorities have urged the Russians to put the photographs in the cars, in the houses and in the social networks instead of taking them to the parade.

The reason given by the Russian government for taking these “precautions” is that there is “an increased risk of terrorist threat” and in order “not to provoke” the Ukrainian army. Along these lines, the alleged drone attacks on the Kremlin, together with a bomb that derailed a freight train a few days ago in the Briansk border region, serve Putin to justify the security measures established for this May 9.

However, there could be another explanation. For a decade, the Russian leader has used the day to display military might and to stir up the sentiments of Russian nationalists. But in full conflict with the neighboring country, this time the move could go wrong. “A Ukrainian drone attack on Red Square during the Victory Day military parade would be humiliating for Putin, but it seems more likely that he is concerned. for the possible humiliation of thousands of civilians who march with the portraits of their fallen sons and husbands in Ukraine,” he wrote in GuardianSamantha de Bendern, Associate Member of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House.

[Las claves de la masacre de Makíivka: el cambio de año, la munición guardada y los misiles HIMARS]

The Kremlin has repeatedly silenced dissenting voices with repressive measures since the start of the war. However, since Putin announced the “partial mobilization” last September, criticism of the high number of casualties among Russian troops has not stopped increasing. Suffice it to remember how anger reignited in Russia after the massacre in Makiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that on New Year’s Eve became at the grave of about 400 Russian servicemen. And it is that it is not only professional soldiers or mercenaries from the Wagner Group who die on the front lines, but young people forced to enlist whose families have not hesitated to publicly show their grief, despair and pain.

The figures on the Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine dance. While the official points to fewer than 6,000 military casualties, kyiv estimates 150,000. There are estimates that even go so far as to suggest that some 60,000 Russian fighters would have died. This very week, The United States put the Russian dead on the ground at 20,000 only since December and 80,000 wounded soldiers.

The majority of these casualties, as detailed in a press conference by the spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, most of the casualties would have been in the town of Bakhmut, the main hot spot of the war since the end of 2022 that has been turned into a “butcher shop” with hundreds of deaths on one side and the other and in which no one has made significant progress. It would be that bloody and fierce battle that would have triggered the death toll in recent months. A figure that -always according to US officials- could continue to increase in the face of the great spring counteroffensive that the Ukrainian forces prepare to recapture the occupied territory.

However, the restrictions that Putin has imposed to Victory Day they seem to have more to do with controlling the official narrative of the war in a moment of weakness than with Moscow not being able to defend its skies.