The weather in Moscow has always been a conversation starter. Grey skies in winter, the first snow. But this week, it has turned apocalyptic.
The closure of a major oil refinery after Ukrainian drone strikes has left a pall of smoke and a strange, oily precipitation over the capital. In the courtyards of Khimki, mothers now shield their children from what they call 'cherniy dozhd', the black rain. It seeps into your clothes, your lungs, your sense of normalcy.
This is not just an infrastructure hit, it is a psychic blow. For years, Moscow lived in a bubble of managed prosperity, with war a distant affair on screens. Now, the war has a smell.
It is acrid, metallic, like burning tyres. The cultural shift is subtle but seismic. At the farmers market outside the Kursky railway station, traders joke nervously about trading in their leather jackets for gas masks.
But beneath the gallows humour is a quiet terror. The Kremlin calls it 'an act of desperation from a failing regime'. On the streets, people call it something else: the end of the illusion.
The refinery's closure is not just a fuel shortage; it is a declaration that no place is safe, not even the heart of the motherland. The black rain falls on soldier and civilian alike, reminding everyone that in this war, the borders between front line and home are dissolving. For the everyday Russian, the human cost is no longer measured in rubles or kilometres, but in the sting of soot against the skin.
