Russia accuses the US of the Kremlin drone attack allegedly trying to assassinate Putin

The backstory: Russia’s Kremlin government complex in Moscow is super heavily guarded. With the war going on in Ukraine, Russian authorities have started boosting those defenses even more, mounting air-defense installations on the Defense Ministry and administrative buildings across the city.

More recently: Around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, two drones tried to attack the Kremlin, and Russia said it was an assassination attempt on President Putin, who wasn’t in the complex at that time. At first, Russia blamed Ukraine for the attacks. But Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy said the country had nothing to do with them. Ukraine has also been saying that the event was a false flag operation by Moscow to justify escalating the war. Following these attacks, Moscow started sending more combat drones to Ukraine.

The development: But on Thursday, Russia blamed the United States for the Kremlin attack. Russian officials are saying Ukraine acted on US orders to launch the drones. The US denied these claims, with US national security spokesperson John Kirby calling them “ludicrous.” The US also said it never encouraged Ukraine to strike outside of its own borders and that it doesn’t endorse attacks on specific leaders. So we still really don’t know who’s behind the drone attacks or if the attack happened at all.

Key comments:

"Decisions on such attacks are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday.

“Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures, wherever and whenever it deems appropriate,” said Kremlin officials.

"The United States has nothing to do with it,” said national security spokesperson John Kirby. “We don't even know exactly what happened here, but I can assure you the United States had no role in it whatsoever."

“We don’t attack Putin or Moscow; we fight on our territory,” Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy said.