Last week, residents of Moscow looked up at black smoke hanging over the city as Ukrainian jets swarmed overhead.
It was Ukraine's biggest drone attack on the Russian capital since Russia launched its full offensive in 2022. Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled, and a large oil refinery on the outskirts of the city was repeatedly hit and burned.
“If Ukraine will burn, your Moscow will also burn,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The recent strikes have brought the war closer to home for many Russians, disrupting daily life and eroding their sense of security.
Analysts say the attack could increase domestic tensions as the war continues. But whether that discontent will reduce Russian President Vladimir Putin's power — or drive him to expand it — remains unclear.
Anne Applebaum, an Atlantic staff writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for her book, Gulag: A History, told the CBC that the latest wave of Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital could affect the changing business and political climate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Historian Anne Applebaum told the CBC it was the first time Muscovites faced “real drone campaigns” since the war began.
“They're finally seeing the war, and they're starting to understand that it's not just that … it's not just that they're not winning, but that the war is coming,” said Applebaum, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his book, Gulag: A History.
Applebaum said the attack would not immediately end the conflict but could contribute to “a radical change in the attitude of business leaders, political leaders” and others who still influence Putin's thinking.
His latest book, Autocracy, Inc., explores how dictators work together to undermine democracies.
Images of the attack have been suppressed
Although the strikes darkened the sky and destroyed buildings, images of the attacks did not appear on the national evening news. And warnings were not issued to city residents.
“I can't say anything about the warning. There are no sirens, nothing,” a Moscow resident told independent Russian news agency SOTAvision. “Yes, I hope this is under control, but it is obviously a cause for concern.”
As Vladimir Putin's campaign reaches Moscow, polls suggest a decline in public support for the Russian president. Nationally, CBC's Terence McKenna examines the dynamic and what it could mean for the future of authoritarian leadership.
Some of the Kremlin's key allies have also criticized Russians for sharing images of the Ukraine attack.
Vladimir Solovyov, a leading Russian broadcaster who hosts programs on the state-run Rossiya 1 television channel, called those who posted the videos traitors.
“This burning desire to photograph and post everything – is it some kind of bite in the ass or what?” Solovyov said on his radio.
WATCH | Applebaum on autocrats:
Applebaum, staff writer The Atlantic who continues to cover the Russia-Ukraine war, said it is not clear how far such images are spreading inside Russia. But he said they are still important.
“They are also clear evidence that the Russians are not safe,” he said, “that they have not conquered Ukraine, that the war is still going on, that they are paying a heavy price for it.”
'We are not immune'
Moscow is not the only Russian city that has been hit by the recent strikes in Ukraine.
On Monday, the Ukrainian military said it had struck an electronics facility in Voronzeh, Russia, which produces missile components, including components for the Iskander tactical missile system.
On Wednesday, drones knocked out power in Russian-held Crimea while targeting energy infrastructure in central and southern Russia. As a result, fuel restrictions have been imposed on the Crimean Peninsula.
WATCH | Russians speak like this:
In communities affected by the strikes, some Russian citizens described a constant sense of panic and anxiety.
“We are insecure and we don't know anything, and every day we sleep in fear,” a resident of Tuapse, a town on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea that has been repeatedly attacked by drones, told SOTAvision.
“That's how our authorities are. They don't give us bad luck,” said the woman.
Even state-run or Kremlin-linked polls reportedly showed Putin's approval ratings falling slightly in March and April. The numbers later rose again after another survey temporarily stopped publishing its results and changed its methodology.
Pro-war figures criticize the leadership
Some Russian nationalist figures who had supported the war are now criticizing Putin's handling of it.
“We have been fighting for five years, but the army is not renewing,” said Pavel Gubarev, a former pro-Russian intelligence leader in Ukraine's Donbas region, in an interview this April. “And what happened before makes you think that this is not a war, but a massacre.”
Ukrainian journalist Eugene Slavnyi cautioned against interpreting such talk as evidence of a changing attitude toward the war itself.
“They may be against Putin, but they still support the war,” said Slavni, editor-in-chief of UNITED24 Media, Ukraine's largest English-language news platform.
“This is what you need to understand, that it's not just Putin's war. This is, unfortunately, a war of the Russian people against the Ukrainian people.”
Exiled opposition activist and businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky told CBC that declining support for the war would worry Putin.
“If the Russian public stops supporting Putin, it will only support the secret service, and it will depend on them,” Khodorkovsky said. “He doesn't want this.”
But Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, said it was unlikely the country's oligarchs would turn on the 73-year-old president.
“The West doesn't understand Russia's power system,” he said. “So-called Russian oligarchs are actually tools of Putin's political machine, not independent actors.”
Will Putin double down?
If widespread protests were to break out, Putin might first like to arrest a few dissidents “to bring people into line,” according to Michael Kimmage, the book's author. Conflict: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.
But Kimmage said an authoritarian leader would not hesitate to use force against his people.
“I don't think there's any shame in mass killings or the use of mass violence,” he said.
Michael Kimmage, founding director of the Kennan Institute and professor of history at the Catholic University of America, says that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be desperate and continue his hatred of the cities and citizens of Ukraine.
Managing both domestic discontent and a protracted war will be more difficult for Putin, said Kimmage, founding director of the Kennan Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank that studies the former Soviet Union.
“In a way, Putin has made his life miserable – his political life miserable – because of this tragic war.”
Kimmage said there is a risk that Putin may continue to lose hope and become dangerous, and go beyond the brutality that Russia has shown to the cities and citizens of Ukraine.
“He can always go after things like water, electricity – he's been doing it – but you can go up there and try to create a disaster for people. [in] Ukraine,” said Kimmage, a professor of history at the Catholic University of America.
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Putin is already wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges including the illegal trafficking of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Applebaum said Putin is “clearly not winning the war,” but warned that increased pressure could lead to more aggression than compromise.
“Maybe he has a strong desire to show how strong he is. We don't know.”
