MOSCOW — The Kremlin’s war is no longer a distant concern for many Russians.
For more than 15 months, the fighting has focused on the battlefields and battered cities of Ukraine, while life continues largely as normal for millions across the border. But Tuesday’s drone strike, the first on civilian areas of Moscow since the war began, brought the reality of the conflict from the front lines to the Russian capital.
While President Vladimir Putin and his officials tried to downplay the attack, which caused minor damage, some Moscow residents told NBC News that it had left them shocked and worried that more might be on the horizon. Influential pro-war voices have also renewed their criticism of the Kremlin, following a wave of incidents that exposed the country’s defenses and signaled that the war was being fought increasingly inside Russia.
“I don’t feel safe,” said Anatoly, who did not want his last name used.
The war has made it difficult to gauge public opinion in Russia, with many afraid to speak their minds or reveal their last names, especially to foreign media, amid a fierce crackdown on dissent and any criticism of what the Kremlin calls his «special military operation.» «in Ukraine.
Anatoly, 83, said he was not so sure about the effectiveness of the city’s air defenses, despite Putin’s praise for their work. “If they even flew to Red Square, then more will arrive here,” he said, referring to the recent drone attack on the Kremlin itself.
Moscow again blamed Kiev for Tuesday’s incident, but Ukraine said it was not directly involved. The Russian Defense Ministry said eight drones were shot down over the capital, some residential buildings were damaged and two people suffered minor injuries.
Anatoly was speaking on Leninsky Prospekt, a street in a quiet, affluent neighborhood in southwest Moscow that he has called home for 40 years. He hadn’t woken up before to a drone crashing into a neighbor’s balcony.
But there was no sense of outward panic in the area. Children were playing on a playground and people enjoying the sunny weather stopped to look at the building, which had a police cordon around it.
Residents Marina, 38, and her 8-year-old son Kolya, who have lived in the neighborhood for nearly a decade, said the incident caused them «unpleasant feelings.»
“Everything is just beginning,” said Marina, who did not want to use her last name for fear of speaking. «I don’t know who can have a sense of security right now.»
Svetlana, 61, another resident who was also afraid to give her last name, said she was taking her dog for a morning walk when she saw emergency services arrive and assumed there was a fire. She later found out that a drone had hit one of the buildings in the neighborhood.
“It was an unpleasant surprise,” he said. “A terrible nuisance. Tragic, one could say. You wouldn’t wish this on anyone, and what will happen next, no one knows either.
Russian officials and propagandists largely ignored the drone strike, with many of the most outspoken Kremlin hawks refraining from commenting on social media for hours, instead rushing to urge an escalation in response.
Some, like Margarita Simonyan, director of Russian state broadcaster RT, eventually got in.
“There is no panic”, she saying on Telegram, adding that it was business as usual on the streets of central Moscow. But «it will happen again,» she warned, and the real question is how the Moscow authorities will respond if many more drones are launched against the capital.
Putin himself said in a brief statement much later on Tuesday that the air defense work was satisfactory and there was an understanding of how to seal the skies over the capital in future.
But some of Russia’s influential military bloggers questioned the Kremlin’s nothing to see here narrative, framing the drone strikes as part of a Ukrainian psychological warfare campaign aimed at intimidating Russian civilians — one that may be working. .
“If the purpose of the raid was to stress the population, then the very fact of the appearance of Ukrainian drones in the sky over Moscow has already contributed to this,” said the Rybar military Telegram channel, known for its pro-war position. . wrote to his 1.1 million followers shortly after the attacks.
The “inert reaction” of Putin and his officials creates the feeling that the Russian leadership does not understand the full danger of the situation in which the country finds itself, Tatiana Stanovaya, founder and director of the political analysis firm R.Politik and academic non-resident of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in his analysis.
Putin is more concerned with raising alarm bells that could force the Kremlin to respond with limited resources and options, he said, than with being undermined by any appearance of weakness. «No matter how daring the next Ukrainian attack is, Putin does not believe that it can provoke discontent with the authorities in Russian society,» he added.
Despite mounting public criticism, some analysts agreed with that estimate and doubted the attack would have a serious impact on the Russian public’s support for Putin and the war.
«The attack did little damage, was irrelevant to most Russians and is being branded by the Russian media as yet another Ukrainian provocation in the face of Russian restraint,» said Christopher Tuck, a conflict and security expert at King’s College London.
«Individual incidents like this will not appreciably change internal Russian policy,» he said. “What matters most are the broader trends, such as the situation on the ground in Ukraine and the level of Russian military casualties.”
Tatyana Chistikova reported from Moscow and Yuliya Talmazan from London.