Ukraine Launches Over 1,000 Drones in Attacks Across Russia Including Moscow

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Drones Over Moscow and the Poverty of Martial Glory

  A thousand flying engines may strike oil depots and pride alike, but they strike hardest at the quiet fortunes of ordinary people who neither chose the war nor profit from it.

  A thousand drones in a single night is a new spectacle of war, but the old logic beneath it is drearily familiar. Ukrainian forces, we are told, launched more than 1,000 drones across Russia, hundreds aimed at Moscow while parliamentary elections proceeded. Many were destroyed; some were not. An oil refinery was damaged, as were logistics facilities that sustain the Russian war. A residential building near the capital was struck; a woman of forty‑four was killed in her own home. Elsewhere a Russian drone destroyed a car in the Ukrainian countryside and four passengers perished. The weapons grow lighter and more numerous; the weight of calamity on the innocent remains the same.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  Ukraine’s Drones, Russia’s Annexations, and the Limits of Just Resistance

  A people robbed of their territory may rightly strike the aggressor’s war machine, but the law of nature draws a hard line at the deliberate or reckless harming of innocents, however righteous the cause.

  On a recent Sunday, as I am told, more than a thousand Ukrainian drones crossed into Russia, hundreds headed toward Moscow itself, while the rulers there were completing several days of parliamentary elections. Russian officials say some 1,100 were shot down across their territory and over annexed Crimea; the mayor of Moscow reports damage to an oil refinery and to a residential building, and in the wider region a woman of forty‑four was killed when a drone struck a three‑storey dwelling. Ukrainian authorities, for their part, openly claim to have hit a key oil facility and logistics site, representing, in their phrase, billions that sustain the war machine. The field of contest has moved from trenches to refineries and apartment blocks.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  Ukraine’s Drone Swarm Shows Who Owns the War—and Who Rents It

  A thousand cheap machines over Moscow reveal more about virtù, weakness, and political theatre than a year of speeches from either side.

  A thousand drones in one night tell me more than a thousand communiqués. Ukrainian forces send over 1,000 drones into Russia, hundreds toward Moscow, just as the Kremlin finishes its parliamentary elections. Russian officials reply that 1,100 have been shot down across Russia, Crimea, and the Black Sea. The mayor of Moscow speaks of 450 intercepted near the capital, yet concedes a hit on the Moscow Oil Refinery and damage to a residential building, with a woman killed in Sofyino. In the Sumy region, a Russian drone kills four in a car; a day earlier, a mother and two children die in Fastiv from a Russian attack. This is not a border skirmish. It is total political war.

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