MAYBE a few more drones making their way through Russia's air defenses will motivate more vigorous opposition and hopefully a coup removing neo-nazi fascist fotze vladi putin from power. From the New York Times and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project .....
Drone Hits a Moscow High-Rise Days Before a Major Military Parade
A drone slammed into a high-rise apartment building a few miles from the Kremlin on Monday, a rare attack on Moscow that came as Ukraine has expanded its long-range strikes inside Russia.
The breach of air defenses in the Russian capital occurred five days before the annual Victory Day parade, a major event on Red Square marking the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Last week, Russia said that the parade would be significantly downsized, in an acknowledgment of the growing threat from Ukrainian drones.
In an effort to damage Russia’s oil-dependent economy, Ukraine has conducted several strikes in recent weeks on facilities deep inside Russian territory. Russia said on Sunday that Ukraine had attacked an important oil-exporting station on the Black Sea, and Ukraine said its forces had struck two ships in the Russian “shadow fleet” — vessels that surreptitiously transport oil in violation of sanctions — in another Black Sea port.
The drone strike on the apartment building in Moscow took place in the early hours of Monday, the Moscow mayor, Sergei S. Sobyanin, said in a statement. There were no casualties, he added. The Russian authorities did not directly attribute the attack to Ukraine, and Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the attack.
It was not clear whether the upscale apartment building, which soars 54 stories in a leafy, quiet neighborhood of low-rise buildings, was the intended target. The tower, the tallest in Moscow’s southwest, is about four miles from the city center, in an area named after Mosfilm, the Moscow film studio.
Videos and photos from the scene showed part of one floor in the tower gutted by the drone hit. The drone’s evasion of air defenses was an embarrassment for the Kremlin, after city officials had reported several interceptions of Ukrainian drones in the Moscow suburbs in recent days.
Last week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called for a one-day cease-fire on May 9, the day of the Victory Day parade. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine rejected the offer, saying his country would welcome a lasting cease-fire, not a day off for Russia to celebrate itself.
Because of the threat of Ukrainian drones, Russia will hold the parade without heavy military equipment for the first time in nearly two decades. The Kremlin also canceled the participation of students from military secondary schools.
Mr. Putin has portrayed Russia’s war in Ukraine as an extension of the Soviet Union’s struggle in World War II, falsely asserting that the government in Kyiv has been taken over by Nazis.
In the past, the Victory Day parade has been an important foreign policy event for Russia, attracting heads of states, including President George W. Bush and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader. This year, Robert Fico, the Russia-friendly prime minister of Slovakia, is expected to be the main foreign dignitary.
Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine
Trump Talks With Putin: A call between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin, the first this year, drew a markedly different response in Kyiv: not panic, but a shrug.
Iranian Official Meets Putin: Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met with Putin in Russia. Moscow, an ally of Iran, has sought to avoid becoming too entangled in the conflict although it wants to remain a key player in the region.
40 Years After Chernobyl: Ideas have been floated for how the contaminated zone could bring economic benefits to Ukraine. But for the foreseeable future, it will be an army-controlled security belt. Here’s photographs from the disaster.
Toxic Air: Officials in southern Russia have warned of dangerous levels of toxins in a Black Sea resort town’s air, ending days of official silence about the aftermath of Ukrainian strikes on an oil refinery there.
Security Tightens Around Putin Amid Coup and Assassination Fears, According to European Intel Agency
Reported by
Security measures of unprecedented severity have been instituted in the Kremlin in recent weeks as Russian President Vladimir Putin anticipates a possible coup or assassination attempt.
Those and other sensitive details are described in a report compiled by an intelligence agency of an EU country.
Reporters from Important Stories, a storied Russian investigative outlet and longtime OCCRP partner, were provided the document by a government source close to the agency and have independently corroborated several of its claims.
The report describes “high alert” in the Kremlin “since the beginning of March 2026” about “the risk of a plot or coup attempt against the Russian president.”
“In particular,” it reads, “[Putin] fears the use of drones for a possible assassination attempt by members of the Russian political elite.”
The report names Sergei Shoigu, former Defense Minister and current Secretary of the Security Council, as a “potential destabilizing actor.”
It also describes a tense meeting, convened by Putin in the wake of the killing of a lieutenant general in Moscow on December 22, 2025, in which top security officials traded blame for the failure to prevent such attacks.
The document does not specify how a European intelligence agency would have obtained such information, but it would represent a remarkable level of access to highly sensitive top-level discussions.
Important Stories have published the text of the document in full despite its anonymous sourcing, citing the public interest and independent corroboration of several details.
“This is one of the most important pieces of news about Russia in recent times,” wrote Roman Anin, the outlet’s publisher, in an accompanying column. “We are witnessing the transition of the Russian regime into a fundamentally different state.”
Staffers working near Putin are no longer allowed to use mobile phones or take public transport, the report says, part of a raft of extreme new security measures implemented by the Federal Protective Service (FSO), the agency that protects Russia’s top officials. “Surveillance systems have been installed in the homes of cooks, photographers, and bodyguards,” the document reads.
In addition, Putin and his family have stopped visiting their residences in the Moscow region, and the president has made no appearances at military sites this year.
As reported by Important Stories, some of the information in the report was independently corroborated. For example, a former FSB officer told reporters earlier this year that it was the FSO, not the FSB, that was responsible for recent large-scale internet shutdowns in Moscow. The same claim is made in the intelligence document.
A current FSB officer told reporters that his unit was having trouble obtaining wiretapping authorization for criminal investigations because “all the equipment has been redirected to monitor the government and other state bodies.”
Amid setbacks in Russia’s grinding war on Ukraine and mounting economic problems, other signs of fear and tension have spilled into the public eye. For the first time in years, the upcoming Victory Day parade in the heart of Moscow will not include any heavy military vehicles, a security decision the Kremlin attributed to Ukrainian drone strikes.
The May 9 celebration — the centerpiece of Putin’s effort to recast his invasion of Ukraine as a continuation of the Soviet war against Nazism — will also be attended by an unusually low number of high-level foreign dignitaries.
An unusual level of discontent has also recently appeared in social media, with Russians voicing their outrage at recent blocking of mobile internet services and rising prices.
