Berlin says Ukraine has right to strike at Russian territory

DW reported this with reference to the official representative of the German government, Steffen Hebestreit.

Commenting on the drone attack on Moscow, the spokesman said: “International law allows Ukraine to strike at Russian territory in self-defense.”

At the same time, Hebestreit added that official Berlin opposes the use of German weapons for such attacks.

Drone attack on Moscow

On the morning of May 30, Russians began to massively report explosions in Moscow and the Moscow region as a result of a drone attack. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that several buildings in the Russian capital had suffered 'minor damage,' but that residents of several high-rise buildings had been evacuated. Instead, Russian sources published footage of the attack.

One Russian military commander claimed that the UAVs flying over Moscow “resemble Ukrainian attack drones.”

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry accuses Ukraine of attacking Moscow with 8 drones, saying that they shot down 5 drones and suppressed 3 more with electronic warfare systems.

However, Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said that Ukraine had launched 32 drones, some of which were aimed at the Rublevka district in the Moscow region.

According to one Russian publication, the drone struck mainly at areas near Putin's residence in Novo-Ogaryovo and other elite districts of the Moscow region.

The Russian dictator's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, also blamed Ukraine for the drone attack on Moscow: “It is clear that these are the actions of the Kyiv regime in response to our very effective strikes on one of the decision-making centers.”

Instead, Ukraine denied that the country was directly involved in the drone attack. Commenting on the incident, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the head of the President's Office said: “The drones want to return to their creators.”

The Kremlin-controlled head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, published a post in which he said that Ukrainians are “terrorists and Nazis” and accused Ukraine of attacking Moscow's civilian infrastructure with drones. He also said that Europe “needs to think about who it is sponsoring and under what conditions it is providing weapons” because, according to him, this “will come back to bite when Russia knocks on the door.” Kadyrov also vowed to take revenge on Ukraine for the attack. NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov responded to the threats.

Vladyslav Selezniov, a military expert, colonel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and spokesman for the AFU General Staff (2014-2017), recalled that in 1999 the Russian FSB committed a number of terrorist attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Mykhailo Prytula, SBU reserve colonel and military counterintelligence expert, noted that the drone attack on Moscow showed the weakness of the Putin regime and this is the main purpose of the drone launch.

The world's reaction to the attack

The world's reaction to the situation was quick. The United Kingdom and the United States commented.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that Ukraine has the right to use force outside its borders to weaken Russia's ability to strike.

Instead, a White House spokesperson said that the United States was still collecting data on drone strikes in Moscow and did not approve of attacks on Russian territory. The United States said Ukraine’s focus should be on the return of its own territories.