Putin Remains 'Calm, Collected' Despite Drone Strike: Russian Official

President Vladimir Putin remained "calm" while two drones attacked the Kremlin compound early on Tuesday morning, according to a spokesperson.

Moscow has framed the dual-drone attack on the Kremlin compound as a Ukrainian effort to assassinate Putin. But skeptics have suggested the incident may be a Russian "false flag," designed to give the Kremlin an excuse to escalate its strikes on Ukraine and clamp down on any perceived domestic dissent ahead of Kyiv's spring counteroffensive.

Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a Thursday briefing that Moscow is considering "a wide variety" of retaliation measures against Ukraine. "Naturally, I cannot provide you any details here. In any case the issue may only be about well-thought-out steps that meet the interests of our country."

Peskov also said that Putin was calm amid the supposed assassination effort, which occurred some 16 miles away from his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.

"You know that the president always in such difficult, extreme situations remains calm, collected, clear in the assessments, in the teams that he distributes. Therefore, nothing new happened in this regard," Peskov said.

High-quality security camera videos of the incident were quickly put online, showing two drones detonating above the Kremlin early on Tuesday morning with one causing a fire on the roof of the Senate Palace.

There has been no independent verification that Ukraine was behind the supposed attack. President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "We don't attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We're defending our villages and cities." Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the allegations could be intended to justify "massive strikes on Ukrainian cities, on the civilian population, on infrastructure facilities."

Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that the "Russian side does not need any pretext for escalation."

"If this attack was organized by the Russian side, why are the Russian TV channels avoiding demonstrating the video recordings of this attack yesterday? They said there was an attack, but we are not going to show you anything," he said.

Luzin said there will be "conspiracy theories" suggesting that "really hawkish" members of Putin's inner circle may have staged the attack "to force him to act more aggressively" in Ukraine, though said the truth is likely simpler.

"I presume—despite any denials—that this attack was organized by Ukrainians," Luzin said. "That's okay, this is the normal way of planning, and this attack was innocent enough. Just a roof of the building has been damaged."

"The main purpose of this attack was psychological," he suggested. "When the Russian leadership is nervous, it makes more mistakes. And on the eve of the counteroffensive, it is necessary to increase the level of psychological pressure."

But Ambassador Anatoly Antonov—Moscow's top diplomat in the U.S.—expressed no doubt as to the perpetrators.

"How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol or the Pentagon?" he said, as quoted by the state-run Tass news agency. "The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for the average citizen: the punishment would be harsh and inevitable."

"Russia will respond to this insolent and presumptuous terrorist attack. We will answer when we consider it necessary. We will answer in accordance with the assessments of the threat that Kyiv posed to the leadership of our country."

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the U.S. was "unable to confirm the authenticity" of Russia's allegations, adding that the U.S. was "not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its border."

Antonov said such statements were "striking in their cynicism and absurdity." He added: "The U.S. did not find it possible to acknowledge what is obvious—it was a terrorist action planned by the Zelensky regime and an assassination attempt targeting the President of the Russian Federation."

"Moreover, the timing was not chosen by chance—ahead of Victory Day and the May 9 parade, where plans call for foreign guests to be in attendance," Antonov said. "The theses that this act of terrorism was allegedly a 'false flag operation' are blasphemous and deceitful."

"The words of the bureaucrats about allegedly deterring the Kyiv Nazi regime from hitting targets outside its borders are a false farce," Antonov said, returning to the common accusation from Moscow that Zelensky's democratically elected government is a far-right junta.

"The atrocities of the Zelensky regime and the indulgence of it by the West only testify to the fact that our adversaries have no desire to seek peace, to save thousands of lives of ordinary Ukrainians," the envoy said.

"Definitely, we will take this circumstance into account while working out our strategy to implement the goals and objectives of the special military operation."

Newsweek has contacted the State Department by email to request comment.

Update 05/04/23, 10:20 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Pavel Luzin.