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CNN –
US officials have picked up on rumors among Ukrainian officials blaming each other for a drone strike on the Kremlin earlier this month, contributing to US assessments that a Ukrainian group could be responsible, sources familiar with the intelligence information said are, to CNN.
Among the wiretapped recordings is the suggestion by some members of Ukraine’s military and intelligence bureaucracy that Ukrainian special forces carried out the operation.
The gossip, along with other intercepted communications from Russian officials blaming Ukraine for the attack and wondering how it happened, prompted US officials to consider the possibility that a Ukrainian group was behind the March 3 incident .May stuck. That morning, two drones flew high toward the Kremlin’s Senate Palace and hit the top of the building.
However, the US has not been able to come to a definitive conclusion as to who is responsible and assesses with low certainty that a Ukrainian group could be behind the incident, officials said. US officials also say it is unlikely that senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, ordered or knew of the attack.
Recent US intelligence reports noted that Russian officials have speculated, both privately and publicly, that Ukraine was behind the attack, leading officials to believe the incident was unlikely to be a state-sponsored operation under false flag that should provide Russia with an excuse to further escalate its war against Ukraine.
The Kremlin has also made some internal security changes in response to the attack, a source familiar with the intelligence service said, without elaborating. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said publicly after the incident that the city’s air defenses were being strengthened.
The drones that hit the Kremlin appeared small and had a relatively light payload, which is likely why they didn’t trigger Russian air defenses, sources told CNN. It is unclear whether they would have had sufficient range to be flown from Ukraine to Moscow.
Zelenskyy speculated earlier this month that the attack could have been a false flag operation and denied his country was behind it.
“Russia has no victories to report,” he told reporters earlier this month in Helsinki, Finland. “Because of this, [Russian President Vladimir Putin] need to perform some unexpected moves like surprise drone strikes.”
Moscow fired a wave of rockets at Kiev after the incident and deployed drones labeled “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin,” the Ukrainian military said.
“We did not attack Putin,” Zelenskyy added. “We leave it to the tribunal.”
US officials do not believe it was an attempted assassination of Putin. It is well known that Putin does not spend much time in the Kremlin and was not in the building at the time of the incident, Peskov said.
There are still a number of possibilities that US officials have not ruled out, including the fact that non-state Ukrainian or Russian actors inside Russia carried out the operation. This could include Russians sympathizing with Putin and hoping to garner support for him.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service referred CNN to Zelenskyy’s statements in Helsinki.
It’s not the first time the US has watched Ukrainian officials retreat after a mysterious attack on Russian targets, such as the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina and the suspected Kerch Bridge truck bombing that linked Russia to the Crimea connects, pointing fingers at each other, sources say.
The US also has information that Ukraine has considered attacking Russia before. Secret Pentagon documents leaked online earlier this year revealed that the CIA had asked the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency to “postpone” attacks on Russia on the anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
Another US intelligence report related to signals intelligence said that in late February, Zelenskyy “proposed to attack Russian theaters of operations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using unmanned aerial vehicles because Ukraine does not have long-range weapons that reach that far could.
US officials have consistently said they do not encourage Ukraine to launch cross-border attacks on Russia.
During a visit to Washington earlier this month, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly claimed there was no new information on who carried out the attack, but broadly added: “Ukrainians are defending themselves.”
“You have to defend yourself effectively,” Cleverly replied to a question from CNN. “They are the victims, we should never lose sight of that. And to defend themselves effectively, they must respond with violence. But always make sure it is thoughtful, proportionate and supports their broader goals and is not counterproductive in any way.”