“Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?”
After six consecutive days of drone attacks on the Moscow region this week, one would think the shock of sudden late-night explosions might compel some Russians to consider what Ukrainian civilians have endured during 550 days of relentless Russian attacks.
Instead, some residents near the Russian capital have taken to social media to vent about the inconvenience of being woken up in the middle of the night, question why the “international community” isn’t coming to their rescue, and blame Ukrainian “terrorists” for targeting civilian areas. (Never mind that Moscow has repeatedly attacked residential areas in Ukraine with Iranian-made Shahed drones.)
No injuries have been reported in the recent string of attacks, and Russian officials claim to have shot down most of the drones that they say caused only “minor damage” to a building in Moscow City and several broken windows elsewhere. Kyiv has not confirmed or denied involvement in the drone strikes.
Russian media widely covered the attacks, airing interviews with residents who showed off their broken windows.
“It was scary to go up to the window,” said one man recounting his shock to wake up and find his window shattered. “This is the first time anything like this has happened to me.”
Separately, he told Deutsche Welle, “At first, there was panic. I thought the building had been hit by a shell.”
“It’s very scary. What if it hits the house next time?” another resident told DW, noting that she has a young child in the home. “Who would have declared such a war on us in Moscow?”
Honestly, I get it. I’m in the US, which means my government does terrible things the world over, and I’d probably have a similar reaction if someone blew out the windows of my home with a drone strike. And I have a lot more ability to influence my government than ordinary Russian citizens do.
I think the Ukrainians are 100% within their rights to fight the war that they didn’t start, and that includes blowing up targets in Moscow. But, from the POV of the ordinary people in Moscow just living, I get it.
Yeah, I started writing a response to someone saying that the normal Russians didn’t have any way to stop Putin and his cronies, but I came to the same rationalization you did. Not only do they have less ability to influence their government, they have far less real information about what’s going on than we do in the US. The propaganda is far more pervasive there (not that there isn’t propaganda here).
And it isn’t even just the US government doing bad things the way Putin is doing bad things. Remember how a small number of our soldiers acted in Iraq and Afghanistan? That wasn’t the government, those were un-elected citizens doing horrible things in a foreign country while at war. And while I wouldn’t have been happy and would have been surprised that my house had been attacked all the way over here, I would have understood.
The propaganda machines on both sides are powerful.