Moscow oil refinery attack brings Russia’s war with Ukraine closer to home

But another local resident, Nadezhda, saw nothing normal in what’s happening.

“It took us four years to win World War Two, even though our soldiers had little food and water,” she told me.

“Today we have all the resources we need. But this war goes on. I’m shocked.”

How do the Russian authorities respond to people like Nadezhda, to Russians struggling to understand why the Kremlin’s so-called “special military operation” is taking so long, and how it can be that the war has come to their city?

Russian officials regularly accuse the West of prolonging the war in Ukraine, blaming European leaders and Nato for supporting Kyiv.

But on Thursday, President Vladimir Putin said nothing about the drone assault. The news bulletins on Russian TV channels barely mentioned it.

When Russian newspapers reported the story the following day, I detected a common thread in their coverage: a coordinated message, perhaps, for the domestic audience.

It can be summed up as this: “However bad it is for us, Ukraine’s suffering more”.

“Our attacks are doing far more damage to Ukraine than Ukraine is doing to us,” declared the ultra-pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“Our strikes to demilitarise Ukraine are far more powerful and effective than Ukrainian attacks,” wrote the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets.

The narrative was almost identical in the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta: “Our attacks on defence enterprises working for the Ukrainian army are much more powerful than those which Russians, unfortunately, are having to deal with.”

“Our strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure linked to the military-industrial complex are far more effective and produce more results,” commented business daily Kommersant.