Igor Girkin, a former paramilitary leader who had long called for an escalation of the war in Ukraine, said on Telegram, “The strength of the psychological blow caused by the drone attack on Moscow is not in the scale of destruction, but in the fact that the nation’s leadership has promised us not a war, but a special military operation.”
“Instead of an honest conversation with a nation, we get blurry consolations about Napoleon’s conquest of Moscow: Don’t worry, everything is going to plan,” he said. “What is the real plan then?”
Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political scientist based in Paris, said that a lack of wartime leadership under Mr. Putin was becoming glaring.
“Everything is built on his often voiced idea of a ‘patient nation’ that understands everything and will endure anything,” she wrote on Telegram on Tuesday. “Let’s see.”
In Ukraine, where incoming drones and missiles are commonplace, some looked at what was happening in Moscow with grim satisfaction.
“It is great that they can feel what we feel every day here,” said Samir Memedov, 32, an account manager in Kyiv who has had to take shelter in a subway station during Russian attacks this week.
Another Kyiv resident, Yulia Honcharova, said she had mixed feelings.
“I’m not among those who believe that we should bomb their residential quarters at night,” she said, “but I do want them to feel what it is like to live under constant alarms, like people live in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro.”
Reporting was contributed by Victoria Kim, John Ismay, Marc Santora, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Andrew E. Kramer, Eric Schmitt and Anna Lukinova.
