1 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2023
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 3, 2023
Karolina Hird, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Layne Philipson,
and Frederick W. Kagan
May 3, 2023, 5:30pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This
map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map
that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this
time-lapse map archive monthly.
Russia accused Ukraine of conducting a drone strike against the Kremlin on May
3. Social media footage circulated on May 3 shows a drone detonating near a flagpole on top of
the Kremlin Senate Palace building in Moscow as two unidentified people climbed up the dome
of the building.
The Kremlin accused Ukraine of orchestrating “a planned terrorist attack” with
the intent of assassinating Russian President Vladimir Putin and clarified that Putin was not at
the Kremlin at the time of the attack and was therefore unharmed.
Ukrainian officials,
including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stressed that Ukraine did not conduct the
attack.
Russia likely staged this attack in an attempt to bring the war home to a Russian
domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization. Several
indicators suggest that the strike was internally conducted and purposefully staged. Russian
authorities have recently taken steps to increase Russian domestic air defense capabilities,
including within Moscow itself, and it is therefore extremely unlikely that two drones could have
penetrated multiple layers of air defense and detonated or been shot down just over the heart of
the Kremlin in a way that provided spectacular imagery caught nicely on camera. Geolocated
imagery from January 2023 shows that Russian authorities have been placing Pantsir air
defense systems near Moscow to create air defense circles around the city.
A strike that avoided
detection and destruction by such air defense assets and succeeded in hitting as high-profile of a
target as the Kremlin Senate Palace would be a significant embarrassment for Russia. The
Kremlin’s immediate, coherent, and coordinated response to the incident suggests that the
attack was internally prepared in such a way that its intended political effects outweigh its
embarrassment. The Kremlin immediately accused Ukraine of conducting a terror attack, and
Russian official responses coalesced rapidly around this accusation.
If the drone attack had not
been internally staged it would have been a surprise event. It is very likely that the official
Russian response would initially have been much more disorganized as Russian officials
scrambled to generate a coherent narrative and offset the rhetorical implications of a clear
informational embarrassment. The Kremlin has notably failed to generate a timely and coherent
informational response to other military humiliations not of its own making, including the falls
of Balakliya and Kherson City in September and November 2022.
The rapid and coherent presentation of an official Russian narrative around the
strike suggests that Russia staged this incident in close proximity to the May 9
th
Victory Day holiday in order to frame the war as existential to its domestic
audience. The Kremlin may use the strike to justify either canceling or further limiting May 9
th
