Drone strikes inside Russia are now a near-daily occurrence. Those in Moscow have had limited military impact. But, along with hits on refineries and airfields, ground incursions in the southern Belgorod region and assassinations of several prominent Russian war supporters, the attacks have caused a psychological shift.
Fifteen months after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, expecting a quick victory, the war has come to the heart of Russia. The country’s elites, who believed themselves safe as the invasion campaign rumbled far away, are rattled.
As Moscow struggles with how to respond, each new attack is a blow to the official narrative of Russian supremacy and a challenge to Putin’s image of invincibility.
“The society is starting to worry: Will the war expand inside Russia?” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “There is a slow internal erosion under way, in attitudes towards the war and towards the elites.”
Ukraine’s top commander Zaluzhny argued last fall that Russia’s “center of gravity” in the war is impunity, a sense among Russians that the war is remote and doesn’t touch their lives. My piece on how recent drone strikes and, now, incursions, upend this. https://t.co/4nRRR23dT4
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) June 6, 2023