By Olha Chepil | 2026-06-30

For months, Muscovites watched the war from a safe distance: on television, on Telegram, on their phones. On the morning of June 18, it arrived outside their windows.

Thick black smoke rose over southeastern Moscow as Ukrainian drones struck the Kapotnya oil refinery, a vital fuel site, for the second time in days. Residents watched a city that officials had long called untouchable burn in front of them.

"I live in constant fear because the strikes are hitting so close to home," Moscow resident Nadezhda told Meduza. She said drones flew directly over her building on May 17, putting it in the impact zone. "Every day as I walk to work, I'm just dying inside."

For others, the cost is everyday life itself.

"Instead of space exploration, new technologies, and medical breakthroughs, we have gas hitting 100 rubles [per liter] (about $1.25), skyrocketing prices, constant fear for ourselves and our loved ones, and a bleak future," said Irina, a Muscovite. "What can you even plan in this reality?"

"The war is coming back to where it began," Polina, another resident, said.

Moscow no longer untouchable

A retired major general in the Security Service of Ukraine, Viktor Yahun, said recent weeks prove one point: Moscow is no longer out of reach. Yahun directs the Agency for Security Sector Reform.

"The strikes on the Kapotnya refinery demonstrate a new reality," Yahun told Kontur. He said the war is moving onto the aggressor's own territory and hitting the infrastructure that fuels its military machine.

The refinery supplies fuel across much of the capital region, sustaining its transport systems, aviation hubs and logistics networks. The strikes triggered fuel shortages and long lines at gas stations in Moscow's suburbs. Online, talk of Russian advances at the front gave way to anxious discussion of air defense activity, airport shutdowns and drone routes crossing the capital.

The damage matters, Yahun said, but the audience matters more. "For the Kremlin, the issue extends beyond the damage caused -- it is about the millions of Russians watching it happen," he said.

That exposure explains a shift in state propaganda, he said. The Kremlin now demands punishment for people who share footage of the fallout, not for those who launched the war. After the June 18 strike, state TV hosts Vladimir Solovyov and Armen Gasparyan called for criminal charges against residents who filmed and posted the videos.

"Everyone posting these clips belongs in prison. And it needs to be done publicly," Solovyov said on his broadcast.

The strikes are becoming systemic. Ukrainian drones hit Russian oil refineries at least 16 times in May, Bloomberg reported, bringing total strikes on oil facilities to 30. The June 16 attack on Moscow and the surrounding region was the largest of the war, with Russian authorities reporting nearly 200 drones.

Putin stays silent

As drones hit the capital, Putin talked about something else. He thanked the prime minister of Laos for gifting Russia two elephants and promised them the "best possible care."

"He continues to act like everything is going to plan while completely blanking out what is happening in Moscow, Crimea, and any other issue he finds uncomfortable," Petro Oleshchuk, a political scientist at the United Ukraine Analytical Center, told Kontur.

This evasion defines Putin's leadership and dates back to the Kursk submarine disaster, Oleshchuk said. When a crisis hits, he said, the president treats it as if it does not exist -- refusing to comment, explaining nothing and waiting for the situation to pass.

Putin eventually addressed the attacks days later, limiting himself to a claim that Russian air defenses are "working effectively" against the drones. The silence cannot hide the economic fallout, Oleshchuk said.

"The Moscow Exchange is in a steep decline, and Gazprom stock has hit its lowest point in years. These are objective facts that are impossible to ignore," he said.

War steps off screen

Measuring Russian opinion is hard, since polling under an authoritarian regime requires careful interpretation. Still, the available data points one way.

Citing the Faridaily project, Meduza recently published leaked internal polling showing more than 60% of Russians feel exhausted by the war. A sociologist familiar with the research said a growing number of people would accept an outcome short of victory. They want the conflict to end and care little about the terms, as long as it stops short of outright defeat.

The independent Levada Center has reported a parallel finding for months: more than 60% of Russians believe it is time to open peace negotiations with Ukraine.

The data reflects mounting discontent and war fatigue, said Vitaliy Nadurak, a psychology professor at King Danylo University.

"Ultimately, you don't need a study to understand that when explosions are going off around you, the economic crisis is worsening, and the future grows more uncertain, both resentment and the desire to change the situation will inevitably rise," Nadurak told Kontur.

He cautioned against easy conclusions. The wish to end the war does not mean Russians have changed their worldview, he said. People want to escape what hurts them, and the war is increasingly that source of pain.

For years, he said, most Russians treated the war as a media event -- something on TV and Telegram, watched almost like a spectator sport, with no personal cost. That is ending.

"The war that Russia itself started has finally broken into the everyday lives of its citizens," Nadurak said. "It is beginning to mean exactly what it should mean: tragedy, loss, fear, and suffering."

The Kremlin offers no way out, he said. Instead, it tells Russians to brace for a long fight -- and every day it drags on brings more suffering.

He called the shift groundwork rather than a finished trend. Ukraine is only beginning its systemic deep strikes inside Russia, and the full impact is still unfolding. But the clearest change is already visible: the war is becoming a personal experience rather than a televised one -- and public perception is shifting with it.