A year ago, Russia marked the 9 May Victory Day celebration with a spectacular display of fireworks that lit up the Moscow sky. This year the fireworks have again been spectacular – but this time they have been caused by long-range Ukrainian attack drones slamming into refineries, pumping stations and factories deep inside Russia.

In the Black Sea port of Tuapse, fireballs of burning gasoline 15 storeys high erupted over the local oil refinery, while rivers of burning fuel ran down the city’s streets. Firefighters took three days to extinguish the inferno, which created a plume of smoke so high it was filmed by skiers from the slopes of the Caucasus mountains more than 60 miles away. Near the Urals in the city of Perm, two days of Ukrainian attacks on a crude oil pumping station, refineries and chemical factories created a toxic cloud 80 miles wide, according to Nasa satellite imagery, and prompted a region-wide chemical emergency alert. Three weeks before, strategically vital oil and liquefied gas storage and export terminals at Ust-Luga on the Baltic were repeatedly blown up.

Most symbolically humiliating for the Kremlin has been the scaling down of this year’s Victory Day parade on Red Square – traditionally a moment for Soviet and Russian leaders to show off their country’s military might. University military reservists will take the place of servicemen and there will be no tanks, missiles and military hardware. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cited the ‘operational situation’ for the change, as well as Kyiv’s use of what he unironically called ‘openly terrorist methods’ – by which he meant the newfound drone capability that has allowed Ukraine to give the Russians some of their own medicine.

Vladimir Putin, for his part, did what he has been doing best ever since the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000 – pretend that nothing has happened. As Perm burned, he appeared on TV discussing cabbage-salting techniques with plump ladies in traditional Russian headdresses. Addressing a cabinet meeting, he assured his ministers there has been ‘no serious damage’ from the attacks.

Increasingly, Russians are ceasing to believe him. ‘In Russia, it feels as though the very composition of the air has changed – or, seen from the outside, as if a haze has settled in,’ says Alexander Baunov, a Senior Fellow at the........

© The Spectator