Attack on the Kremlin: a symbolic action that exposes Moscow’s fragility

The tsar is naked. The small Ukrainian drone could not kill Vladimir Putin, but he did perhaps worse: he destroyed his image as a strong man, the pillar of his twenty-year power system. The explosion in the night, with the flames grazing the Russian flag, shows all the fragility of the president, unable not only to defeat the Ukrainians but even to defend his palace.