It’s not the drone strikes that are hurting Moscow, it’s the traffic jams

A few minutes into a taxi ride along one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares, I get anxious. The driver seems to be veering off in the wrong direction, and we are being swept along in dense traffic. “It’s quicker under the bridge and along the embankment,” I venture. He swears and taps the map on his phone screen. His navigation app flashes up different routes in rapid succession, then freezes.

Like most cab drivers here he is not from Moscow and doesn’t know its streets well: he’s completely reliant on apps to find his way around. They freeze several times a day now, he tells me. Signal interference is a problem for passengers too: when I try to summon a cab the apps place me at random spots in the city that are nowhere near where I’m standing, or simply say, “geolocation problems, please try later”

Swerving across busy lanes to get back on track for my destination, the taxi briefly passes the Kremlin. “They block the GPS and we suffer the pain,” the driver grumbles. It’s widely assumed the Russian authorities have turned off geolocation services due to a recent wave of Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow. Neither the cab driver nor I mention this to each other: talking about the war (referred to here as the svo, a neologism derived from the initials of the Russian words for “special military operation”) is risky in Moscow, and trust these days is in short supply.

In the first year of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the war felt far away and life in Moscow went on pretty much as normal. But since the first drones reached the Russian capital in May, the city has been on permanent alert. Overnight attacks have mounted. At the end of July drones hit a skyscraper in the business district, and the following month they struck buildings in residential areas. Now drones fly into Moscow and the surrounding areas about once a week. The campaign hasn’t caused significant damage or casualties so far, suggesting it is primarily aimed at creating fear.

Muscovites would never admit to being afraid, but there is a definite sense of unease in the capital, in part because of the patchiness of information. Journalists are allowed to report on the aftermath of drone strikes, but this footage rarely makes it into the news bulletins on state TV. In August there was a huge explosion at a factory two hours’ drive from Moscow. Russian officials declined to speculate on the cause, but it looked like a Ukrainian drone strike.

The authorities in Moscow don’t warn of approaching drones with air-raid sirens, as happens in Kyiv. Once an attack has happened, the mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, will typically make an announcement about it on his Telegram channel. But officials rarely give out details of how many drones have taken part or which places they have targeted.

If Russians want to learn about drone strikes near them they need to become detectives. This means scouring the internet for videos of drone damage, many of them unverified (the business news site RBK has started publishing a map of verified strike reports, which helps). My friends are always swapping tips on which Telegram channel is the most informative. One tells me she sets two alarms overnight so she can keep up with the latest strike news.

Some Russians are growing frustrated with what they see as the authorities’ heavy-handed response to the drone strikes, especially because it doesn’t seem to have stopped them. One meme doing the rounds shows Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, flying blithely over the Kremlin in a comically low-tech aircraft.

Disruptions to taxi services mostly affect the middle classes (a friend who works as a fashion stylist worries about being late to meetings and greets my suggestion that she walk to them with a laughing-face emoji). Disruptions to internal flights are a wider problem. Increasingly, planes are delayed or cancelled because of “operational reasons” or “delayed incoming flights”, which travellers now assume are euphemisms for drone attacks (or the signal disruptions aimed at preventing them).

This affects a huge number of people – most airline passengers wanting to get from one part of Russia to another still have to make a connection in Moscow. The capital’s airports are crammed with anxious passengers craning their necks to see the arrival and departure boards. Older travellers, perhaps remembering the interminable queues of the Soviet era, seem to be less agitated.

There are far fewer people flying out of the country these days. Western Europe has been unwelcoming since the start of the war, and Russia’s Baltic and Scandinavian neighbours recently closed their borders to Russian passport holders. But Istanbul still offers a gateway to Europe, and flights there have also been affected.

In the international departure lounges, travellers in designer sports gear sit waiting for hours on end. Some exchange tips on the best places to shop, or nap, in Istanbul airport. Others phone home with updates on their flight status. What they don’t do, at any point, is mention the svo. ■

Kate de Pury is a journalist based in Moscow

images: Getty, AlamY