The first thing I noticed after arriving in Vidnoye, a suburb 15 miles south of the Kremlin and Moscow’s centre, was the debris on the ground – smashed glass, clumps of what looked like loft insulation and piles of crumpled metal railings.
The next thing was all the cracked and shattered windscreens, which people were patching up with bubble-pack, bin liners and tape.
And finally, I saw the cause of it all.
Ukraine war latest: Peace talks begin in Saudi Arabia
At the top of the apartment block I was standing beneath were massive black scorch marks, spread across the outside of the building.
At their centre were four empty window frames and a huge hole in the building’s masonry. The smashed windscreens were the result of the falling debris, which volunteers were still clearing up as we arrived.
Pic: Reuters
The building was hit by one of the Ukrainian drones that reached Moscow’s outskirts in the early hours of Tuesday, in what was the largest attack of its kind since the war began.
For several hours afterwards, crowds of stunned locals continued to gather in the car park beneath, gazing up at the damage in a mixture of fear, relief and confusion.
“I’m still in shock,” said Avusala, a young mother who lives in the block that was hit.
“I was very scared. I woke up at 5am because of a loud sound. I picked up my children and ran out.”
A car with a broken window parked next to the building. Pic: Reuters
This was just one of nearly 100 drones shot down over the Moscow region, which the Kremlin said was evidence that Moscow’s air defence system “worked well”. But not everyone we spoke to in Vidnoye shared that optimism.
“The very fact that it was missed is unpleasant,” said Oganes, 30, suggesting the scale of Ukraine’s overall attack, which saw Russia shoot down 337 drones in total, should have been detected long before it was launched.
“I understand that it’s impossible to react to every single small attack and so on, but I’m sorry, this is 300 drones,” he said.
Moscow has cast the attacks as terrorism, accusing Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians. Kyiv denies the accusations, saying it only aims to hit war-related infrastructure, and that the attacks are in response to Russia’s bombing of Ukraine.
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“I want to hope that [peace talks] will lead to a final result, to the end of such barbaric actions,” another resident, Olga, told us.
It certainly feels like Ukraine was trying to send a message with this attack. A message not just to Russia, but also to the United States.
That’s because it came just hours before the crunch talks between Ukrainian and American officials in Saudi Arabia, and it follows what has been a tortuous few weeks for Kyiv.
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Donald Trump’s push for a peace deal has seen his administration try to force Ukraine into making concessions, with the US president saying recently that Russia “holds all the cards”.
This felt like Ukraine was saying to the US that they’re wrong. That Russia doesn’t hold all the cards, that they can still cause Moscow problems, and that if they’re forced to make concessions, then Russia should be too.
