The whine of drones over St Petersburg has done more than rattle the windows of the Winter Palace. It has punctured the pretence of invulnerability that Vladimir Putin so carefully cultivates. As the city hosted his annual economic jamboree, a spectacular failure of air defence reminded the world that Russia’s imperial ambitions have outrun its capacity to protect its own heartlands.
This is not merely a tactical embarrassment but a cosmic alignment of irony: the only thing louder than the buzz of Ukrainian-made quadcopters over the Neva was the silence of the oligarchs. They know, if the Kremlin does not, that empires die by inches in the periphery but are betrayed by neglect at the centre. The Roman emperors could not fathom that their capital might fall to barbarians who could not even pronounce its name.
Yet here we are: a postmodern Carthage, where the drones of a near-peer adversary dance above the palaces of the Tsar. The West should not cheer too loudly. Every civilisation that enjoys the spectacle of a rival’s coma eventually finds itself on the operating table.
But for now, let the champagne corks pop. The most dangerous thing a strongman can do is look weak. And St Petersburg has just broadcast the very image of vulnerability that Putin has spent two decades trying to expunge.
The economic forum was meant to project resilience; instead it has projected a target. The lesson is as old as Thucydides: if you cannot control the space above your own cities, you cannot control the narrative. And in this war of narratives, Putin has just lost the opening chapter.
