The Moscow elite have been shaken a little ahead of the annual Victory Day parade on May 9 after a Ukrainian drone hit an elite residential skyscraper and rumours of a coup attempt against Russian President Vladimir Putin swirl in the international press.

The parade is one of the main features on the calendar, when traditionally, the might of the Russian military is on display as nuclear bombs and tanks roll across Red Square as state-of-the-art jet fighters scream overhead trailing red white and blue smoke.

It is also a deeply emotional day for regular Russians as the so-called Immortal Regiment march through the streets – families carrying pictures of their relatives killed in what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War. More than 25mn Soviet citizens died defeating the Nazis, of which around 13mn were Russians – almost every family in the USSR lost someone to the war. An entire generation of young men was wiped out, while the allies took losses in only the hundreds of thousands at most.

But this year will be different. After a Ukrainian drone penetrated Moscow’s air defences and hit the “House on Mosfilmovskaya”, fears that Ukraine might try and assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin at the event have led to a beefing up of security and a decision to cancel the display of Russian armament. The celebration will be limited to soldiers marching on the square, and if it is anything like last year, many of the contingents will be from other countries like China and Central Asia. The Kremlin has said they will not display weapons as they are all needed in Ukraine.

The Immortal Regiment is also unlikely to appear. Last year it was cancelled as the Kremlin was uncomfortable with the idea of regular Russians carrying pictures of their dead relatives in case they chose to carry pictures of those killed in Ukraine, not WWII.

A “leaked” European intelligence report published by the Financial Times also “revealed” that Vladimir Putin has dramatically tightened personal security measures and retreated to bunkers amid fears of assassination or coup from within his own elite. Reportedly the plotter is one of his best friends Sergei Shoigu, the current head of the Security Council, and the former Defence Minister and head of the Emergency Services Ministry.

The event has also produced some shadow theatre of competing ceasefire gestures. Bankova and the Kremlin are trying to outdo each other. Russia's Ministry of Defence announced a unilateral ceasefire for May 8-9 on May 4 — and simultaneously threatened a "massive missile strike on the centre of Kyiv" if Ukraine attempted to disrupt the parade. So far a weird unspoken agreement has meant that both sides have refrained from launching missiles at parades although both sides are more than capable of doing it.

The ministry called on Kyiv civilians and employees of foreign embassies to leave the city, citing Zelenskiy's remark that "Ukrainian drones could fly to the parade" in Moscow as justification, after the Ukrainian drone hit the Mosfilmovskaya sky scrapper.

Not to be outdone, Zelenskiy responded by declaring that Ukraine would also declare a ceasefire and enter a "silence regime" from the night of May 5-6.

"No one has officially requested a ceasefire from Kyiv," he noted— an implicit reminder that Putin's ceasefire proposal had been communicated to Donald Trump rather than directly to Ukraine. The exchange leaves any meaningful ceasefire as theoretical on both sides.

It’s all a show where each leader is trying to position themselves as the peacemaker and the other president as the warmonger.

The intelligence dossier

The three-page intelligence report from a European agency, simultaneously published by the Financial Times, CNN and the independent Russian outlet iStories, and described as having been released to journalists by a high-ranking official has been widely dismissed as a probable psyops operation by Western intelligence services to unsettle the Kremlin elite. The main objection to the report is that if it is true then it would alert the Kremlin to the very threats it describes and so prevent the coup – something the Western allies would love to see.

The report states that since the beginning of March 2026, "the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin himself have been concerned about potential leaks of sensitive information, as well as the risk of a plot or coup attempt targeting the Russian president. He is particularly wary of the use of drones for a possible assassination attempt by members of the Russian political elite." This bit is probably true.

The report is not entirely without substance, which is the best way to sell a lie. In May 2023 two drones were shot down over the Kremlin in the middle of the night in an alleged attempt to assassinate Putin. And it is also well known that Putin has tightened his security and grants access to an increasingly small circle of people. The fact that he spends an increasing amount of time in secure locations – “bunkers” – has also been widely reported. He makes less use of his main Moscow residence at Valdai and even reportedly spends more of his time in Krasnoyarsk, a pleasant city in the south with a climate similar to that of France.

In the fresh report, Russia's Federal Protective Service (FSO), tasked with providing presidential security, has introduced sweeping new protocols. Visitors to the Presidential Administration now undergo two levels of screening, including a full body search by FSO officers. Security guards, cooks and photographers are banned from using internet-enabled devices and from travelling on public transport, while their homes are placed under surveillance. Russian state media airs pre-recorded footage of his activities and he conducts much of his business by video links.

The Shoigu dimension

But the most controversial aspect of the report is that it is Shoigu, who is the ringleader of the plot. Shoigu "is associated with the risk of a coup, as he retains significant influence within the military high command," the report states.

It links that assessment to the March 5 arrest of Ruslan Tsalikov, Shoigu's former deputy and closest ally, on charges of embezzlement, money laundering and bribery — describing the arrest as "a breach of the tacit protection agreements among elites" that weakens Shoigu's position and "increasing the likelihood that he himself may face criminal prosecution."

It is highly unlikely that Shoigu is planning to oust Putin. Apart from the fact that the two men are close friends and regularly go camping together, Shoigu is almost entirely dependent on Putin for his power.

Shoigu is from Tuva in the middle of Russia’s empty interior and one of the poorest regions in Russia. He is also half ethnic Tuva, an indigenous people, on his father’s side, which in the Slav-centric Soviet Union makes him an outsider, but rose up in the Soviet System under the “Friendship of the Peoples” ideology in those days. The USSR had a total of around 120 ethnicities so the Kremlin had to work to unite them into a single Soviet Union, including the Tuvans, a Turkic-speaking ethnic group.

Secondly, he has no conspicuous ties to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the core of Putin’s powerbase. If anything, his relationship to the FSB is antagonistic. Any successful coup in Russia would need the FSB on board.

Thirdly, despite being the former Defence Minister, he has no military background and is disliked by the generals, who see his military rank as an honorific place holder for Putin. The current Defence Minister Defence Minister Andrei Belousov plays the same role. He also has no military background and is Putin’s former economic advisor – another Putin placeholder.

It is precisely Shoigu’s isolation from the most powerful factions in the Kremlin that probably makes him appealing to Putin as a counterbalance to the so-called siloviki security services faction that is the power in the Kremlin.

There is a question mark over his health too. He famously disappeared from public view in March 2022 when he was Defence Minister just as the war with Ukraine started and was rumoured to have had a heart attack. It is another reason the military don’t like him as they blame his disappearance at a crucial time for the disaster that the invasion of Ukraine turned into.

His most prominent political clash was with Evgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC. Shoigu battled with the former caterer when he tried to fold Wagner into the regular Russian military, provoking Prigozhin’s famous march on Moscow that was not a coup attempt, but a mutiny, designed to force Putin to sack Shoigu. Putin stood by his man. Prigozhin died in a plane crash. Wagner has now been folded into the Russian army as the “Africa Corps”.

As OCCRP analyst Ilya Lozovsky noted, the document "doesn't make any claims about him leading a coup. It openly acknowledges his weakened position," The Bell reports.

The report also documents an explosive meeting convened by Putin on December 25, 2025, following the assassination of Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov in Moscow three days earlier. At that meeting, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who was appointed by Shoiguy, accused security services of failing to protect the military. FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov complained of a personnel shortage and criticised Defence Minister Andrei Belousov for not maintaining his own protective unit. Rosgvardia, another Moscow-based elite military service, Director Viktor Zolotov said he could not allocate resources for military protection. Putin subsequently instructed the FSO to assume personal protection of ten generals of the General Staff — an unusual expansion of presidential guard responsibilities into the military chain.

The FT based its reporting not only on the intelligence document but also on its own Kremlin-adjacent sources. Those sources confirmed that Putin has become increasingly isolated and that security measures have been tightened — but attributed the changes to Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb on June 1 where drones hit airfields deep inside Russia, and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US special forces in January as possible destabilising factors, rather than specifically to fears of a coup attempt by Russian elites. iStories reported that some of the data in the document had been independently confirmed, though only partially.

The communications blackout

Nevertheless, the drone strike on the House on Mosfilmovskaya has sharpened everyone’s focus as attacks on Moscow by Ukraine are rare.

During the Victory Day period on May 5-9, Russian telecom operators are restricting not only internet access across Moscow and other major cities but also SMS services — an extraordinary measure that goes beyond the intermittent mobile outages that have repeatedly angered urban Russians in recent months.

The Bell reports that the FSB, not the FSO, has been identified by a former officer as the entity behind the Moscow internet disruptions — a detail that corroborates one element of the intelligence report and adds to the picture of competing security agencies operating with overlapping and uncoordinated mandates.

The attack on Mosfilmovskaya was clearly another psyop by Ukraine. I lived many years on Mosfilmovskaya myself and watched the skyscraper go up. It’s a leafy and quiet corner of Moscow that is at the same time very close to the centre. The building is at the end of the embankment that leads to Sparrow Hills that has Moscow State University (MGU), Russia’s best university, perched on top of it, but no road along the waterside at the bottom of the hill which means there is little traffic. Going up the hill and there is a bevy of embassies, including the German and Swedish embassies, marking it out as a diplomatic district.

The most notable building on the road is the headquarters and studios of Mosfilm itself – the epicentre of the Soviet Hollywood. The building’s majestic façade is the well-known icon for all Russians as many legendary films were shot here, and contemporary TV shows and movies are still produced there. I was walking past the building once when a helpful lady who works there offered to give me and my little children an impromptu tour.

Driving the other way and the embankment leads to Kievskaya station, a major nexus on both the rail and underground networks, which is important as Moscow is so vast having decent underground connections is a very important means of getting about. Turn right across the bridge at Kievskaya and it is a short drive down Novy Arbat to the Kremlin and the Duma buildings. Turn left at Kievskaya and it is a short drive down the vast Kutuzovsky Prospect to Moscow City, the main business district.

The Kremlin is well protected by air defence systems mounted on the roofs of the surrounding buildings, so striking the largely unprotected House on Mosfilmovskaya is probably the easiest target, and one of the most spectacular, in central Moscow, designed to bring home that the Russian capital is vulnerable.