Massive blasts in Moscow shatter even Putin’s protective shell

News of the damage must surely have found its way into the most isolated of bunkers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of secluding himself from the deteriorating realities of his invasion of Ukraine. But the staggering images from Moscow’s skyline on Thursday surely mark a moment when even the thickest levels of insulation around the Kremlin head cannot shield him from the sound of repeated blasts just 10 miles away that obliterated refineries leading to thick black smoke wafting over Russia’s capital.

Videos posted by Russians to social media tell two stories. First, of air defenses in the capital – all apparent three rings of them – pierced by cheap, mass-produced drones that Ukraine was once on the bitter receiving end of but now fires back nightly at Russia. A refinery lid blown clean off. Multiple fires raging 10 miles from the Kremlin itself. An environmental disaster surely unfolding. The damage itself will impact fuel supplies, perhaps leading to gas station queues in a city the Kremlin has fought long and hard to protect from the consequences of war.

The second is one of widening discontent in Moscow’s population and the political instability that can bring. The relentless posting of videos the Russian authorities have tried to limit shows growing dissent, and message management that has ultimately faltered. Since a tiny drone hit the Kremlin in May 2023, Moscow’s skyline has been troubled by Ukraine, even causing last month’s Victory Day parade to be scaled back dramatically. Thursday’s cacophony of startling videos – with Ukrainian drones arriving in waves over the flames to follow up on strike after strike – marks a global moment of clarity, in which the Kremlin is truly struggling.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attacks a response to Russia’s relentless nightly bombardment, which on Monday included Kyiv’s oldest and holiest church complex. Zelensky appears to have emerged yet further emboldened by the G7 meeting in Evian, where President Trump expressed both indifference to and support for Ukraine’s plight.

Zelensky appears to have dialed down his expectations from Trump to zero. However, he emerged with one key thing he’d sought: the suggestion – opaque still – that Ukraine might be able to mass-produce under license the air defense systems and missiles that the US and Europe make, are running out of, and are slow to replace. It suggests the most transactional of relationships – in which Kyiv, in order to survive, might build the weapons NATO’s factories are basically too slow and expensive to make – and shows Ukraine has cards to spare.

It is unclear from Trump’s vacillating mood at the G7 whether he still has the appetite to pursue peace. Even he must see the Kremlin has thus far snubbed.

The Europeans have held out some hope that an envoy from what Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni referred to as a “middle power” might foment talks again. The UK, France and Germany released a statement 11 days ago reiterating their long-held starting point for a deal – including the original non-starter for Moscow of a unilateral ceasefire.

Hope appears to spring eternal that Putin might seek some sort of off-ramp, given his dire stalemate on the battlefield and struggle defending Russian airspace. Indeed, he has made some opaque utterances suggesting a rethink: that a deal and the capture of all the Donbas are not “mutually exclusive” ideas (whatever that means), that the war will end one day soon, and that he might welcome former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as a mediator with Europe. However, even when Putin acknowledged the economic damage of Ukrainian strikes last week, his response was to suggest more retaliation.

As videos emerge of blackened rain falling on Moscow’s cars, the decision on the direction of the war falls again to its progenitor: Putin. It is perhaps optimistic to think he will opt for diplomacy, and the winding down of a conflict that western intelligence says has killed half a million of his countrymen, to seize a part of Ukraine that equates to about 0.7% of Russia’s own vast size.

Putin’s choices have been poor through the war: from believing it would take a matter of weeks to grab Kyiv; to trusting his military that their supply lines would hold through the Russian collapse in late 2022; to permitting the waste of manpower through the 2023-4 “meatgrinder” assaults in the Donbas which have left even huge Russia with recruitment issues; to believing Donald Trump could – through rounds of flattery and cajoling – somehow deliver useful concessions from Kyiv.

Over decades, Putin has conjured the image of an unflappable, precise policy master. The scale of the disaster outside his walls – and on the distant frontline, where mid-range strikes by Ukraine daily rattle Russia’s supply lines and cause fuel shortages in occupied Crimea – must surely penetrate his decision making. But that may not spell an immediate plea for resolution –…