On June 18, Ukraine carried out the largest and most successful drone attack on the Russian capital since the beginning of the war, striking again at the Kapotnya oil refinery. The "Belaya Dacha" shopping center, the "Sadovod" market, and several other targets were hit by Ukrainian drones and missiles from Moscow's air defenses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a special address called this "a fair response" to the incessant Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, in which civilians are dying every day. According to him, it is time for Russians to start putting pressure on their leader Vladimir Putin and insist on an end to the war.
Collapse of the megalopolis system
The latest Ukrainian attacks on facilities in the Russian capital, the epic footage of a fuel tank cap flying into the air, reminiscent of the special effects from "Star Wars", are not just vivid pictures that may shock many, but in reality will be forgotten in a few weeks – these are completely real harbingers of a collapse that could affect the gigantic multi-million megalopolis, the largest city on the European continent.
Many remember the meme about how Moscow has become more beautiful under its current mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. It was during his term that the Russian capital underwent gentrification, in which the urban landscape was radically transformed – including the four city ring roads.
Inside, within the Boulevard Ring, is the Golden Ring. Some extend it to the borders of another ring - the Garden Ring. Look at the map, measure the area in square kilometers - this is a significant territory, in which there are practically no grocery stores and pharmacies, and there are no gas stations at all. From here, people either drive to the outskirts to go to hypermarkets, or eat exclusively in cafes, and residents who live outside the boundaries of another ring highway, the Third Transport Ring, come to the center as if to a museum - to walk around.
If Moscow runs out of gas (and for it, even a simple shortage is fatal, given the number of cars), the city center will "disappear". Already, internet outages, geolocation and a decline in Muscovites' incomes have reduced the number of Moscow car-sharing users by almost 20% - one of the components of the so-called "best service", which before the war in Ukraine began, Muscovites were proud of, along with the fast delivery of packages by an army of poor couriers.
What will happen if the strikes continue - not so much against Kapotnya, which has long ceased to supply Moscow with gasoline, but against oil refineries in neighboring regions and against logistics chains from Belarus with its oil refineries?
The only chance to get Muscovites moving
And what will happen to the Moscow metro, which works like clockwork and carries millions of people a day? Will public transport save the residents of the Russian capital? The authorities in Moscow and Russia are certainly considering all these issues at the moment, because they clearly do not want a riot in the capital.
There is no need to be fooled. Fuel and food crises can stir up Muscovites. But not attacks on factories or other facilities. In the 1990s, Moscow residents got used to living in conditions of relatively regular terrorist attacks. For a significant, and soon probably most, part of the population, life in this megalopolis is not worth a penny. You will not be able to scare them, they will quickly get used to and adapt to drone attacks. All active people will now take their families to other regions and to their dachas in the summer, and when they return, they will already be psychologically ready for the new threat.
So the only chance to wake up Muscovites and make them at least timidly ask for an end to the war, let alone demand it insistently, is to create serious domestic discomfort for them. I write this as a person born in Moscow, whose grandmother, by the way, devoted her post-war youth after graduating from an institute to the creation of the so-called "missile shield" of Moscow - the same air defense system that has now failed.
And Trump said that Putin no longer "has no cards"
The Russian authorities are trying to pretend that nothing special has happened. Perhaps it really is for them. Judging by their preparations before the May holidays, they expected these strikes much earlier. But then this would have been just an attempt to ruin Putin's celebrations.
Now the symbolic meaning of these strikes has changed significantly. Donald Trump signed a memorandum on the cessation of hostilities with Iran and announced that he would return to the Ukrainian topic. Moreover, the congratulatory phone call from Putin on the occasion of his 80th birthday turned out to be clearly insufficient, and after the meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of the G-7, the American president spoke as if he agreed with the position of the Europeans, according to which the situation has changed, Russia now looks weaker in the war, not Ukraine, and that Putin, not Zelensky, "has no cards". The EU also joined the negotiations with a "single voice".
Now these new powerful "lights of Moscow" only confirm the changes. Changes that in the field of diplomacy and foreign policy may prove historically important for the Putin regime.
* The author Ivan Preobrazhensky has a doctorate in political science, he is an expert on Central and Eastern Europe, a commentator in a number of media outlets and the author of a weekly column in the State Duma.