Moscow ablaze

Muscovites awoke to black rain again this morning — still staining cars, windowsills, and balconies with the vivid reminder that Ukraine's largest-ever drone counter-attack just nailed the Russian capital's largest fuel supplier, barely 15km from the Kremlin.

The result? Sure, a skyline littered with fireballs and smoke, major airports plunged into chaos, and random commuters stuck in gridlock filming overwhelmed air defence operators firing manpads from right next to soccer moms.

But the real result? Here are three quotes to consider, starting with…

1. "If Ukraine burns, Moscow will burn too"

That’s Ukraine's Zelensky, warning it’s a "fully justified response" to Putin's war. But he’s also been careful to avoid any hint of moral equivalence, emphasising that while Putin (the invader) hits random homes and historic monasteries, Ukraine still targets Putin's war machine.

The sharpest framing, however, might've actually come from Zelensky's foreign minister: “One of the most popular questions asked by Muscovites this morning is ‘What is going on?’ I can answer. Your country started a war of aggression against ours… Now that you know what’s going on, ask Putin when he is planning to end it.”

So... what's Putin said about all this?

2. […]

That's not an editing error above. Not this time at least. The reality is Putin still hasn't said a word.

Why? Maybe because he's busy hosting ASEAN leaders in Kazan. Maybe because he follows the Tsarist pattern of letting subordinates own the failure while he plays the disappointed father. Maybe it's Maybelline. Or maybe letting his juniors speak first allows him a bit of deniability and flexibility while he actually figures out any response.

So then... what did his juniors say? Putin's long-running loyalist foreign minister (Lavrov) has pledged more escalation via "massive coordinated strikes", implicitly repeating the fiction that Moscow has somehow been ‘holding back’ all these years.

But there's not really anything Putin could say at this point to un-do the fact that his Muscovite and Petersburg elites are now exposed to the impacts of his war.

Speaking of which...

3. “I haven't been able to fill up for two days now”

Moscow's Kapotnya refinery has now taken big hits two days in a row. And with its crude distillation, catalytic reformer, and diesel hydrotreatment fried, it won't just flick back on.

The city’s mayor (Sobyanin) insists there's "no immediate threat" to fuel supplies, though that increasingly risks giving Baghdad Bob energy given a) Kapotnya provides ~half the capital's fuel, and b) Russia (of exporting fame) is now importing fuel from Asia.

But that third quote above actually comes from a local (via Reuters) over in occupied Crimea (pop. 2.5m) — the pain there is now even sharper after weeks of Ukraine systematically severing the peninsula’s key supply routes. The result is bottlenecks, and Ukraine is now hitting those too — a reported 50 trucks in one hit alone, just last week.

It's all now causing shortages, queues, dry pumps, and panic. And it's now turning Putin's Crimean trophy (yoinked from Ukraine in 2014) into a costly, and increasingly untenable liability.

Sound even smarter:

• Remember we flagged the mysterious absence of Putin’s star central banker (Nabiullina) a couple of weeks ago? She’s still missing, and it’s getting harder to believe the Kremlin’s ‘sick leave’ story.