The drones that tried to attack the Kremlin on May 3 were launched not from Ukraine, but at most from the Moscow region, as evidenced by their size and the likely absence of a warhead. Sergey Tovkach, CEO of Avianovatsiya, a developer of unmanned aerial vehicles, told The Insider about this. According to him, the UAVs were controlled manually and could use forbidden frequencies.
“UAVs didn’t fly in from anywhere, they were launched from a maximum of somewhere in the Moscow region. Two things testify to this: firstly, the size of the drones, because of their size they could not fly from Ukraine; second, charge. They did not have a charge, there was something made of pyrotechnics. It wasn't a mine, it wasn't ammunition that could do any damage. This is what can be bungled from improvised means in Russia.
Accordingly, most likely, the operator was remote, for Ukrainians this is no longer a secret. Applies drones controlled remotely. The operator sits somewhere in one place, via Starlink there is a repeater, or Starlink is installed on the drone if it is a heavy drone.
They missed the UAV, because either there was a Starlink repeater that looks to the sky and uses rather non-standard frequencies, so it is extremely difficult to drown it out, or a repeater was used from any Internet to, again, a non-standard frequency. That is, somewhere in the apartment on the windowsill there was a module connected to the Internet, which was connected to the remote control and transmitted a control signal. The operator is located somewhere, even in Kyiv.
Ukrainians have already done this too. Including the Ukrainian UAV "Leleka" now flies at frequencies of about 400 MHz, "SHARK" – at 450 MHz, all these are non-standard frequencies. This means that the usual full-time drone-killers, which are designed for drones and which operate in civilian permitted ranges, do not work on these UAVs. Accordingly, the FSO officer on the roof cannot guess at what frequency it works either. He most likely used a drone piercer, and the drone piercer did not work on him.
There is also an option to get on the frequency of government communications or the ambulance frequency – that is, such forbidden frequencies that, under normal conditions, no one in their right mind will get up, unless there is a task to hit the Kremlin. Accordingly, if you stand on these frequencies, then the electronic warfare engineer will not turn on interference by default. Even if he sees that some kind of lewdness is happening on this frequency, he will at least take the time to coordinate the jamming of this signal. And since the drone does not fly from afar, accordingly, it will simply have time to do its dirty work before the electronic warfare service generally decides to interfere with such frequencies.
There are a lot of options, but the drones were definitely controlled by hands, they did not fly according to navigation, because navigation does not work in the Kremlin area. Let's just say that it is hardly possible to make a GPS system resistant to jammers on these drones, although they exist, and on Ukrainian drones they met twice during my practice. However, in general, even Ukrainian kamikazes are equipped with conventional GPS units.
The Kremlin had a very powerful jammer, about eight jamming points. That is, even the Kometa, which is the GPS module that is installed on Ka-52 helicopters, lost satellites at the Kremlin. Therefore, some makeshift drone, which was dragged somewhere in the trunk across the border, could not overcome these jammers. Accordingly, there was no navigation there at all, it could be launched from somewhere in the adjacent territory. Perhaps from some park, perhaps from a clearing, from a construction site. It could really be launched by two people who were simply told, following the instructions: “Chukchi, press this button and don’t touch anything else.” The operator was remote and controlled this drone purely from the image from the camera via the Internet. This is my opinion after watching the video and the characteristics of these drones.
Most likely, there will be more similar attacks, because in fact there are no barriers to hitting both Kyiv and Moscow. Against terrorist methods of struggle, that is, when strikes are used surreptitiously, not a single country is insured. Attempts to fly to Moscow have been made before. All these drones that fell in the Tula region, in the Moscow region – they all went to Moscow. But either they cut into electronic warfare, or cut into air defense, or into a Christmas tree. That is, the most common way for Ukrainian drones to fall is a collision with a tree, the so-called “pine air defense”.
Actually, there were attempts, but not a single one could fly, the distance is quite large. Even if we take Geraniums, they are launched from a much closer distance, they are not launched from Moscow. And Geranium is still a serious, fairly specialized machine, a very well-designed drone, including one with a good anti-jamming GPS receiver. But these "Blinkers" converted – this is still a kindergarten. Therefore, for them the task of flying from the territory of Ukraine to Moscow is practically unrealizable, which, in fact, has been proven. Launching the drone from close range worked, and may still work. It all depends on whether these saboteurs are caught or not and how severely they will be punished. It will depend on how many people who want to participate in this will continue.”
The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under the article “terrorist act” (Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) after an attempted attack by two drones on the Kremlin on May 3. After the incident, the Kremlin said that the Russian side "reserves the right to take retaliatory measures where and when it sees fit." Pro-Russian bloggers and officials called for strikes on Kyiv. On the same day, Russian troops shelled Kherson and the Kherson region, 19 people were killed, and 47 more people were injured. Ukraine denies information from the Russian authorities about Kiev's involvement in the attack on Putin's residence. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kiev is defending its territories and will not attack Moscow or Putin. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, in turn, argues that "a terrorist attack against the president is an attack on Russia." The UN called on both sides to refrain from rhetoric and actions that could lead to escalation.
