Last night, Moscow sustained the first-ever large-scale drone attack. Technically, it wasn’t the first time, of course.
In the past, drones tried to hit the Kremlin and dropped in the Moscow Region in droves, too.
Moscow is no longer impervious to that kind of stuff.
But the previous strikes on Moscow and its suburbs were mostly peanuts, kind of dry runs, image-poopers,
and shallow newsworthy bombshells.
Today, we’re talking a large-scale attack. The Russian side reports 25 drones.
True, this time there was no disastrous destruction, and no one got killed.
But unlike everything we’d seen before, yesterday, Moscow was essentially embroiled in the war. Moscow, of all places.
CAPITAL CITY’S ROLE
In non-democracies, the capital city is typically disproportionately important politics-wise.
In such regimes, everything revolves around its relations with central power.
The best career is one of a public servant, the best business comes with government contracts,
a competitive edge are the strings you can pull in high offices. A famous map of the U.S. features the HQ of major companies.
It shows that almost every state, including traditionally flyover ones, is home to an international business behemoth.
It’s unthinkable in Russia. There’s only a handful of companies headquartered outside of Moscow.
This magnetic Moscow-oriented force is irresistible.
A career in public service inevitable culminates in Moscow.
Moscow is home to all businesses that want to be closer to authorities. They, in turn, draw strings of counteragents.
You don’t want to serve the country’s largest bank from a provincial center, 1,500 miles from Moscow.
The service sector follows suit. Then comes everybody else with an eye to career growth.
To top it off, Moscow has a different fiscal system. In terms of key socioeconomic indicators,
Moscow stands out from the rest of the Russian regions, including St. Petersburg. It feels like a standalone country.
Such role has a long history. It carried over from the Soviet times where Moscow was akin to a foreign country.
It always hit different. Whatever the crisis the nation is going through, including famine,
Moscow will keep getting supplied and restocked.
This type of centralization has a huge upside to it.
When your power and business interests are a 30-minute ride away from the Kremlin,
you couldn’t care less about anything else.
The faraway provinces of your empire may be caught up in a s**tstorm.
People may have fomented a mutiny a few dozen miles away. None of it matters a shred.
They have no power and no resources to succeed. However, once the capital city goes rogue, you lose everything.
What we’re witnessing is the importance of this rule to the Russian authorities. Moscow shouldn’t be involved in the war.
The border provinces may be living through hell.
Moscow residents should be sipping cocktails and dining at posh restaurants.
A good example would be the fact that, according to a reliable source,
Moscow, a megacity of at least 12 million, had 50% the number of fallen soldiers compared
to a far-flung republic of just 300,000.
Over the past year, typical headlines regarding the regions bordering Ukraine included artillery shelling, drone strikes,
armed saboteur attacks, bombs dropping from own planes and hitting downtown areas, railtrack blasts, etc.
Now, what’s the biggest headline in Moscow? Mayor Sergei Sobyanin inaugurating a subway line,
a Ferris wheel, a hospital, or a park.
If you pull up the headlines and paste them onto a split screen, you’ll be tempted to think these are two different countries
altogether. Moscow would look like a state in southern Europe with its own agenda.
Ukraine’s top brass needn’t be schooled on this.
They realize that in order to pressure the Russian authorities
and send them into panic mode, you shouldn’t be striking southern cities.
A single UAV tumbling out of the Moscow sky and bashing a couple of windows will do the trick.
They realize that the Russian authorities will turn a blind eye to almost everything,
including a battle tank breakthrough, unless it unfolds in Moscow.
But when it’s Moscow, it’ll be defense at all costs.
Air defense systems will be immediately snatched away from the battlefield and jetted to Moscow.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a Russian citizen who gives a damn about the fate of the “new territories,”
but when Moscow is under attack, you just can’t keep it under wraps.
It suddenly blows the lid off the authorities’ vulnerability and inability to handle the repercussions
of what they started in the first place.
TRADING PLACES
We’ve kept reiterating that kamikaze drones have changed the war as we knew it forever.
And that change is far more substantial than any high-precision missiles and supersonic stealth fighter jets costing a fortune.
A kamikaze drone is essentially an airworthy lawnmower.
Its price starts at a few hundred bucks.
In terms of the war effort, where an easily disposable artillery shell costs a couple grand bucks, this is almost a freebie.
This also marked a change in the arms manufacturers’ mindset.
Why indeed would you come up with something fancy-shmancy capable of evading air defense systems,
when you can cobble together a hundred jalopies.
True, 90 of those will be downed, five will fail and crash, and three will miss their targets,
but the remaining two will deliver a strike.
This will be just perfect. After all, these steely hornets on steroids are at best ten times cheaper
than a single high-tech missile.
The operations of air defense systems targeting these whirring nuisances cost 20 times the price of a single device.
Russia was the first to tap into its potential as it started bulk-buying Shahed drones from Iran.
Initially, it felt like they struck gold. Cheap UAVs were overloading the Ukrainian air defense
and hit civilian infrastructure, shutting down basic amenities.
But there were three real takeaways and upshots. One, the frontline was unaffected by those countless rear strikes.
Two, the ceaseless drone carpet bombing led the allies to begin providing Ukraine with the latest air defense systems.
Kyiv is now virtually impervious. Three, the game was on, and Russia was legitimately given a taste of its own medicine.
We told you long ago that Ukraine was putting together its own UAV fleet.
All those one-off strikes on Russian territory were just testing the waters in terms of Russia’s air
defense capabilities and vulnerabilities.
We told you that a day would come when Moscow would be targeted the way Kyiv was.
That it would happen once Ukraine felt like it was time to strike.
There’s no way of combating it. As a humongous state, Russia is much more vulnerable than Ukraine.
The time has come. Clearly, Ukraine needs it to show the Russian command that the frontline isn’t just 1,000 miles
of Ukrainian land where you can build up literally any amount of manpower or materiel.
The real frontline stretches from the Russian border northward, all the way to Moscow.
They want to show them that they better keep an eye on their borders to avoid armed saboteur attacks
in the future and that air defense systems should be all over the place to be able to protect Moscow.
You can no longer build up your resources along the line of contact. The updated line of contact is Russia in its entirety.
REAL TARGET
Why is it Moscow that’s being attacked as opposed to, say, a crucial military facility?
The reality is, that’s where things get tricky. A military facility must be tracked, and the attack must justify the means.
Besides, the strike must be precise, something that proves to be a hell of a job for an unsophisticated drone.
Moscow, on the other hand, is a perfect target.
It’s huge and therefore unmissable. And the effect will be much greater than hitting a strategically important arms depot.
Remember what I said at the outset of this video? For undemocratic regimes, the capital city is crucial.
A drone crashing into an abandoned barn on the southern outskirts of Moscow is a big deal.
A warehouse packed full of hypersonic ballistic missiles going boom would just mean losses in hardware
and never make the news.
Conversely, a strike on Moscow, including on an abandoned barn, is a strike on Putin that betrays a vulnerability.
Weakness, mind you, is about the only thing such regimes can’t get away with.
The ensuing panic and fuss intended to protect Moscow along with finger-pointing spells trouble and a mess.
This is the kind of situation where battlefield needs are suddenly put on the back burner.
After all, the generals and civilian authorities are too busy playing the blame game.
Their butts are on fire, and the last thing that’s on their minds is the Ukrainian army’s advancements.
The Ukrainian army is picking up the steam, while drones are hitting Moscow. Which one is our top priority?
This isn’t exactly a multiple-choice question. And this mess favors the Ukrainian offensive.
The question, “When will the long-overdue offensive kick off?”, no longer makes sense. It’s already happening.
The land battles aren’t there, but delivering an air strike on Moscow is far more important
than capturing yet another half-abandoned whistle-stop.
Importantly, the petty destruction in the wake of the attack shows that these drones carried either few explosives or none.
Slaughtering random civilians wasn’t worth it. The main goal was a political one.
The goal was to wreak havoc and, thus, assist the offensive. Crucially, Ukraine is parroting Russia’s war mechanics,
but not its methodology.
They don’t seek to terrorize civilians. What they aim to do is rather mess with the top brass.
The strike map just proves this point. Most of them were close to the most notorious upscale suburban gated community.
That hammered the message home, with no middlemen.
A strike on a densely populated city, not to mention my hometown, isn’t something I relish.
On the other hand, it’s a full-out war, and this particular attack wasn’t meant to be lethal.
This is very much in line with what’s happening in Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv on a daily basis.
But in practice, that’s something out of the ordinary: an act of war designed to assist their own troops
in the battlefield while avoiding mass casualties in Moscow.
And make no mistake, this act will have consequences.
Both practical, which we’ve already discussed, and psychological. It marks a new humiliating blow to Putin
and his cronies who’ll now resort to fussy nuclear saber- rattling, showing their incompetence and worthlessness.
At the same time, it’ll be a significant morale-booster for the Ukrainian troops.
But this being said, the only consequence this act doesn’t have is civilian deaths.
And as long as there are none, it’s a legit military tactic.
Let’s wrap it up with a bang. What’s up, my dear geostrategists? How are you faring against NATO?
Still basking in your fantasies? How does that feel? No, it’s not Zelenskyy or Ukrainian generals and intelligence.
That’s you. You’re to blame for Moscow being attacked for the first time in 80 years.
What about your “air defense circles” around Moscow? What’s with the swagger?
Two years ago, no one believed you were so messed-up as to start a big war in Europe.
Today, it’s hard to believe you’re so pathetic, you’re unable to keep your effort going anywhere.
What’s happening now isn’t the endgame.
Sooner or later, you’ll be held responsible for the entire clusterf**k you got us all into,
for screwing up the country that was bound to prosper and thrive.
See you tomorrow!