Thick black smoke billowed from a blazing oil refinery in south-east Moscow on Thursday, turning the sky dark – a sight so surreal that even the reporter who has lived through years of war says it forced him to update his sense of normal. But as the acrid cloud hung like a giant shroud over the city, an angler sat by a pond staring out across the water, carrying on fishing. Children played on swings in a nearby playground. Shoppers walked to and from a supermarket as if this were just another Thursday. For so long, the war in Ukraine felt distant to people in the Russian capital; many pretended it wasn't happening. That is harder now as the front line creeps closer.
Thursday's attack was one of the largest aerial assaults on the Moscow region since Russia's full-scale invasion began. As well as damage to the oil refinery, shopping centres and residential buildings were hit. According to the governor of the Moscow region, an eight-year-old girl was killed in a fire caused by one of the drone strikes.
“Ukrainian drone hits Moscow oil refinery; an eight-year-old girl killed, but life carries on as Putin stays silent.”
“I’m not totally surprised by what happened,” said Slava, who lives in an apartment block opposite the refinery. “But I didn't expect such a big attack. I heard explosions and saw lots of smoke. It's the kind of thing you normally see in the movies. I saw it from my apartment window.”
Another resident, Nadezhda, saw nothing normal in what was happening. “It took us four years to win World War Two, even though our soldiers had little food and water,” she said. “Today we have all the resources we need. But this war goes on. I'm shocked.”
Yet the Russian state largely ignored the assault. President Vladimir Putin said nothing about the drone attack. The news bulletins on Russian television channels barely mentioned it. Russian newspapers reported the attack – but the silence from the Kremlin was telling. For many Muscovites, the war has finally arrived. For the man by the pond, it was just another day.