It turns out that Anton Gerashchenko, a key interface between “official Kiev” and “deniable” covert wetworks since no later than 2014, also shows up in the efforts to target Russian President Vladimir Putin for assassination by drone attacks. He was the key “advisor” to the Minister of Internal Affairs Arseniy Avakov, in the 2014 coordination with the paramilitary groups (Azov, Aidar, etc.) sent into Donbass in March-April 2014 to put down the opposition to the February coup, and the early workings of the “Myrotvorets” hit list, deployed against those who reported on the paramilitary operations. He’s had a role in determining whom to target in Donbass ever since, including in the execution of local mayors in 2022.
In February 2023, Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, tweeted a photo of what appeared to be a Ukraine UF-22 airborne drone, manufactured by Ukrjet. (Ukrjet says it has a range of 800 km.) It had landed near a Gazprom facility near Gubastovo, about 100 km southeast of Moscow. He wrote next to the photo: “It is more than 500 km away from Russian border with Ukraine. Soon Putin might get very afraid to show himself in public as drones can reach far distances.”
The interest in extending drone attacks to Moscow was evident. Then in March 2023, a drone injured at least three Russians in Kireyevsk, about 400 km from Ukraine’s border. On March 28, a Ukrainian drone landed about 45 km from Moscow.
Grayzone featured a story on May 2, the day prior to the May 3 early-morning drone attack on the Kremlin, which featured an April 6 televised offer (on the Kiev-based TSN network) by the head of a Ukrainian weapons company named Volodymyr Yatsenko. He offered 20 million hryvnias (about $549,000) to any Ukrainian weapons producer that manages to land a drone inside Moscow’s Red Square during the May 9 Victory Day celebration. (During the offer, he also took credit for the March 28 drone attack.) While Yatsenko, a headline-seeker who may have other reasons for the “patriotic” publicity—i.e., he has an upcoming trial regarding a mysterious disappearance of $5.5 billion from Ukraine’s Privatbank in 2016—his offer/threat was taken seriously enough for Moscow to cancel May 9 parades in the areas closer to the border with Ukraine.
