FROM OUR CHIEF NATO CORRESPONDENT BARON ULRICH VON DER SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN

THE SMALL DRONE that exploded over the Kremlin was not a high-tech assassin, it was a Putin fan, says NATO.

“Yes, some of these little fellows, they can develop affections for people whose lives we program into their operating systems. This particular drone appears to have gone beyond mere affection to outright adoration.

“We think it was the inclusion of photographs of President Putin being macho that might have swung it. You, know, fishing, judo, that kind of thing. Our drones are normally asexual but occasionally, as in the human world, they drift, you know, towards binary and then non-binary and then fluid and all that. We imagine this is what happened here.

“The drone was being used in the Baltic States for training purposes when it went missing. We suppose that the little fellow made his own way to Moscow to try and meet Mr Putin. Actually, to get his autograph. That was all. We know this because we were able to view its operating system when we were trying to convince it to come back. Yes. But by that stage, it had taken on the personality of a teenage girl chasing Harry Styles. Next thing it’s over the Kremlin. Carrying explosive. Awkward, no?

“So we blew it up. Well, we had to do something. I mean it might actually have gone after Harry Styles at some point.”