Londoners, are we still allowed to discuss the weather without being accused of Russophilia? Because the black rain falling on Moscow is not a meteorological curiosity. It is a stain. The dark, greasy particulate now drifting across the capital is the physical manifestation of a Ukrainian drone strike against an oil refinery. And the British intelligence assessment, as leaked through the usual channels, treats this as a tactical success. It is not. It is a glimpse into the kind of war we are now fighting: a war fought through infrastructure, a war where the environment itself becomes a weapon of attrition.
Let us be clear. Ukraine has every right to strike military targets on Russian soil. This is not a moral question. It is a strategic one. What does it accomplish? The refinery, near Ryazan, is burning. That will disrupt fuel supplies for a few weeks. It will also, as the black rain demonstrates, turn a civilian population into unwilling participants in this conflict. Moscow residents, already living under the hum of air raid sirens and the psychological weight of a war their government refuses to call a war, now have to wash soot off their cars and wonder if the air is safe to breathe. This is precisely the kind of domestic discomfort that Vladimir Putin can exploit. He will point to the black rain and say, 'You see? This is what the West wants. This is what the Nazis in Kyiv are doing to our children.' And the Russian public, already conditioned by state media, will rally around the flag.
I am reminded of the Goths sacking Rome, but not the dramatic barbarian hordes. I am thinking of the slow rot, the long siege of the city's water supply, the gradual poisoning of the wells. That is what this is. But the Goths had a goal: they wanted the city. What does Ukraine want? It wants to survive. And so it strikes at the economic and logistical sinews of the Russian war machine. It is a sound strategy, in theory. In practice, it risks turning the Russian people against Ukrainians, not their own government. Just as the Blitz hardened British resolve, these scattered attacks on oil refineries will not break the Russian spirit. They will embitter it.
And what of the British intelligence assessment? It reads like a school report: 'Damage assessed as moderate. Fuel supply disruptions expected to last two to three weeks.' There is no mention of the civilian cost, the pollution, the propaganda victory handed to the Kremlin on a soot-blackened platter. Intelligence assessments have become a ritual incantation, a way of saying, 'We have seen the enemy and he is us.' But the enemy is also the weather. The enemy is the logic of total war that makes no distinction between the refinery and the apartment block next to it. We are all living in the shadow of the black rain, even if it only falls on Moscow today.
This is the tragedy of our age. We have become connoisseurs of moral equivalencies and strategic ambiguities. We debate the legality of drone strikes while the soot settles on the playgrounds of the capital. We are, in the words of the great Victorian historian J.A. Froude, 'wandering in a vain show.' The show today is the black rain. Tomorrow it will be something else. Perhaps a broken gas pipeline. Perhaps a nuclear power plant under fire. And we will issue more assessments, hold more seminars, and write more columns like this one. The readers will nod sagely and move on to the crossword. I do not blame them. To look too long at the black rain is to see yourself in it.
So here is my provocation for the day: stop pretending this is a war that can be won through pinprick strikes. Either Ukraine is given the weapons to end it decisively, or we must accept that this is a war of attrition that will last years, turning more cities into toxic wastelands. The current approach is a slow bleed. It is the most civilised form of barbarism yet devised. And the black rain is its calling card.
