The Bizarre Misadventure of Zelensky’s Assassination Attempt on Putin

The Ukrainian drone strike against the Russian president’s state residence in Novgorod region might be the perfect microcosm for the the late 2025-26 Ukraine supporter information space.

Even when I first reported Lavrov’s initial comments on the drone strike, I had a feeling that the opposition’s kneejerk reaction was going to be flat denial. Of course in my first article on the subject, I noted that it was just a verbal statement, as one could hardly expect all sorts of visual and physical evidence just minutes after the event allegedly took place. And I also noted how Zelensky denied the attack took place almost instantaneously, which is quite impressive. He apparently did not even need to inquire with his military if there were any drones in the area before jumping on Twitter.

Not to be overly critical, Mr. Zelensky, but you did publicly announce on Christmas that you wanted Putin dead. When a drone tries to fly through his bedroom window not even a week later, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider you the first suspect.

While legacy media outlets still support the Ukrainian cause, they have gotten noticeably more cautious about throwing their credibility behind every wild claim to come from Kiev, and that happened in this incident as well. They just observed truthfully that Zelensky denied the accusation and that was it. But, unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s grassroots expat and western supporters did not share such caution. Oh no, they leapt on their blogs and social media handles to boldly state that Russia had no evidence of a Ukrainian attack and it was fake news. That turned out to not be a wise move.

The following day I wrote an update, noting that Russia had provided more detailed explanations of how the attack took place and published video of drone wreckage allegedly linked to the attack. And the other side wasn’t idle either. The Wall Street Journal claimed, per a CIA source, that the American intelligence community doubted that the attack took place. Well, what more could be said about the matter after our prestigious guardians of truth at the CIA denied everything?

But, as I wrote in today’s media report, Russia states they have turned over flight data from the intercepted drones to the USA. Maybe US officials will say the data is fake, but what if they don’t? What will Team Ukraine’s excuse be then?

All of this, especially in the context of the New York Times’ claim that the CIA assisted Ukraine with attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, makes me think that Vladimir Putin is not the only enemy of the Deep State. They’re attacking Trump to an equal degree as his Russian counterpart, whether or not the orange man himself realizes it. These media “leaks” and “anonymous sources” all have a shared effect of making Trump look stupid and not in control. And can we really even say they’re wrong at this point? It’s pretty embarrassing for Trump to have a phone call with Putin while Trump’s own employees are involved in a plot to assassinate Putin. The question both Trump supporters and the Russian government have to ask themselves is this. Is Trump a moron or is he just so weak he doesn’t have control of his own government?

The crucial difference between Putin and Trump is that Putin is protected by the Russian military and nukes. Trump is just a guy who happens to be the president of the USA. There is nothing stopping the Deep State from arresting him except the magic protection of the rules based order. It’s against the rules to disappear a sitting president, so he’s safe for the moment. But they don’t really need to “take him out” like in an action movie. All that’s necessary is to discredit and isolate him enough for four years, maybe not even that if MAGA gets trounced in the midterm elections. But either way, once Trump is out of office they can round up and jail his supporters, just like the first time.

Back on the topic of Ukrainian information war, the drone attack story is to the same tune as Pokrovsk (which Ukraine still denies losing) and their ongoing TikTok offensive on Kupyansk. The new strategy for defeating Russia in 2026 is to just deny every Russian victory and pretend they didn’t happen. That can work in the short term, especially if Russian forces manage to get ejected from a major urban area they made a big show of taking over, like Kupyansk, but I can’t imagine this is going to work long term. Really, how long will audiences believe the “gray zone cope” by the map bloggers like CopeState DeepState of just pretending Russian gains are still contested?

Thank you everyone for reading, and especially thank you to Andrey Shumkin, who gave my first donation of 2026, and a big one too!

Now that my immigration and related administrative worries are safely behind me, writing is now my ‘full time job.’ If you would like to support me, consider making a donation at my Buy Me a Coffee page here.

Ian Kummer

I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.

Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).

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