Moscow’s evidence

Russia’s military has offered what it claims is proof that Ukraine attacked Putin’s Valdai residence. It ain’t much.

More than a day after accusing Ukraine of launching a mass attack on one of Vladimir Putin’s presidential residences, Russian officials have presented what they claim is corroborating evidence. On Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry issued a statement describing what it said was a Ukrainian attack on Putin’s residence in Valdai, in Russia’s Novgorod region. The ministry claimed the attack took place overnight on Monday, December 29.

According to Major General Alexander Romanenkov, head of the Russian Aerospace Forces’ Air Defense Missile Troops, Ukraine attempted to strike the residence in two waves of drones launched from Ukraine’s Sumy and Chernihiv regions. The attack, he said, began on the evening of December 28 and continued into the morning of December 29.

The Defense Ministry released several pieces of purported evidence.

A map

The map shows the flight paths of 91 drones heading toward the Valdai residence, crossing over the Bryansk, Smolensk, Tver, and Novgorod regions. The map indicates the sites where Russian air defense units claim to have intercepted the drones.

Video of a downed drone

Footage filmed in a forest shows a drone that appears to have crashed into the snow. A Russian soldier says in the video that the aircraft was carrying a six-kilogram (13.2-pound) high-explosive charge.

Testimony from a serviceman and the moment a drone is destroyed

In another video, the commander of an air-defense crew, identified by the call sign “Grom,” says Ukraine attempted to attack a “protected facility in the Valdai district of the Novgorod region” using drones. The soldier stops short of saying openly that the site was Putin’s residence.

The footage also includes what the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda television channel claims is the moment one of the Ukrainian drones was destroyed: there’s a flash on a monitor and voices saying, “Target destroyed,” and “There’s a detonation.”

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Statement from an eyewitness

The Defense Ministry and Russian state media released another video in which a man named Igor Bolshakov, a resident of Roshchino in the Valdai district, describes hearing the “sound of missiles” and a “grinding noise.” According to his profile on the social network VKontakte, Bolshakov supports Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Here’s what Bolshakov said:

I woke up early in the morning because of the noise. Honestly, at first I didn’t understand what it was. I thought maybe a dump truck was going off somewhere or something, but once I got up, it became clear pretty fast. I’d never heard the sound of missiles before — this scraping, grinding noise. It was coming from the lakeside. Lake Valdai is over there; I live on the other side, so it was really far away, but yeah, it was coming from that direction.

It remains unclear whether drones actually carried out an attack on Putin’s residence. Ukraine denies the claim, calling Moscow’s statement “another lie.” The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, said on December 30 that it was still uncertain whether the incident had occurred. Washington would review U.S. and allied intelligence to “get to the bottom of it,” Whitaker added.

Ruslan Leviev, the founder of the investigative group Conflict Intelligence Team, said on December 30 that his “acquaintances from Russia’s Novgorod region” reported “heavy air defense activity overnight on December 28–29 with loud explosions.” “Air defense systems had been active there before, but never on this scale — toward Valdai,” Leviev tweeted. However, neither he nor his team published any evidence corroborating the claim, and local Novgorod-region social media channels also posted nothing after the alleged attack.