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For many residents of Moscow, life has long carried a facade of normalcy even amid the ongoing full-scale conflict with Ukraine. But Thursday’s large-scale Ukrainian drone assault on the capital region shattered that quiet illusion in plain sight, leaving a stark question hanging over the city: how much longer can the war stay at arm’s length for ordinary Russians?

The attack targeted an oil refinery in southeast Moscow, sending acrid, thick black smoke billowing into the sky that turned the daytime sky dark, draping the city’s skyline in a giant, ominous shroud. Visible even from the Moscow ring road, the raging fire at the Kapotnya refinery was an undeniable, surreal sight for onlookers. Along with critical infrastructure damage, residential buildings and local shopping centres also sustained impacts, and an eight-year-old girl was killed in a fire sparked by one of the downed drones, according to the Moscow region governor.

What struck observers most, however, was the jarring contrast between the massive emergency unfolding and the mundane routines of nearby residents. An angler sat undisturbed on the bank of a nearby pond, continuing to fish with barely a glance at the massive smoke plume. Children laughed and played on swings at a playground directly opposite the facility, while shoppers moved to and from the local supermarket as if nothing out of the ordinary had interrupted their day. For the reporter on the ground, this moment drove home a sharp realization: long-held definitions of “normal” life in Moscow had already permanently shifted.

Over the 18 months leading up to this attack, the capital has slowly grown accustomed to the unthinkable. Assassinations of senior army generals, repeated drone incursions, and near-constant rumblings of conflict have crept closer to the city center, turning what once would have been unthinkable into an accepted daily reality. Thursday’s strike stands out as one of the largest aerial attacks on the Moscow region since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, making it impossible to ignore the war’s growing proximity.

Local reactions to the attack split along familiar lines, reflecting the divided perspectives of Moscow residents. “I’m not totally surprised by what happened,” explained Slava, who lives in an apartment block directly across from the refinery. “But I didn’t expect such a big attack. I heard explosions and saw lots of smoke. It’s the kind of thing you normally see in the movies. I saw it from my apartment window.” For other locals like Nadezhda, however, the strike was a shocking reminder of the conflict’s senseless prolongation. “It took us four years to win World War Two, even though our soldiers had little food and water,” she said. “Today we have all the resources we need. But this war goes on. I’m shocked.”

The Russian government and state-aligned media have offered a coordinated, consistent response to growing public unease about the war’s arrival in Moscow. Officials have long pointed the finger at the West, blaming NATO and European leaders for arming Ukraine and prolonging the conflict. Notably, President Vladimir Putin made no public mention of the strike at all during the attack, which took place while he was hosting a Russia-ASEAN summit in Kazan. Mainstream Russian television news bulletins barely covered the incident, and when national newspapers reported on the strike the following day, they all stuck to a single unified narrative for domestic audiences: Ukrainian suffering far outweighs any damage done to Russia.

Pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda declared that Russian attacks on Ukraine have caused far greater destruction than any retaliatory strikes on Russian soil. Another popular tabloid, Moskovsky Komsomolets, echoed the claim that Russian efforts to demilitarize Ukraine are far more powerful and effective than any Ukrainian counterattacks. Government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta and leading business daily Kommersant repeated the same framing, emphasizing that Russian strikes on Ukrainian military and defense infrastructure deliver far more substantial results than the strikes Moscow is now forced to endure. When the Kremlin finally issued an official response, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov doubled down on this narrative, telling reporters to look at footage of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities to see far greater damage, and confirming that Russian military operations will continue unabated.

There is no indication that the increasing frequency of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian territory has altered Putin’s course. Recent public statements from the Kremlin leader show he remains determined to press ahead with the invasion, confident Russia will outlast Ukraine in the ongoing war of attrition. Still, the strikes are beginning to take a measurable economic toll, particularly attacks on critical oil infrastructure like the Moscow refinery. Reports of petrol shortages and rationing have emerged in multiple regions of the country, and fuel prices have climbed steadily at pumps across Russia.

For Moscow residents, the new normal means bracing for more drone attacks to come. Moskovsky Komsomolets predicted in its coverage that Thursday’s 18 June strike will not be the last, or even one of the final attacks on the capital. Standing beneath the roiling black smoke from the refinery, one local resident summed up the resigned acceptance many residents feel: “There’s nothing we can do about this. It’s our government that must decide what to do. All we can do is watch.”

ROME – In a high-stakes private meeting at the Vatican this week, the president of Latin America’s leading development financial institution made an urgent case to Pope Leo XIV: that the centuries-long pattern of exploitative resource extraction in the region does not have to define the future of rare earth mineral mining, a sector critical to the global clean energy and technology boom.

Ilan Goldfajn, leader of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), met with the pope on Friday to outline how responsible rare earth development could deliver transformative economic benefits to Latin America, provided strict environmental, labor and governance safeguards are enforced and local communities capture added value from the extracted resources. The outreach comes just months after the Vatican launched a formal campaign urging faith institutions to divest from mining companies, a policy rooted in decades of Vatican advocacy for Indigenous communities disproportionately harmed by unregulated extraction across Latin America.

The pitch represents a significant test of whether the development bank can convince a pope with decades of on-the-ground experience in Latin America’s mining regions to embrace a new model of resource extraction. Goldfajn’s meeting, which followed a January audience between the pope and senior mining industry executives, reflects the broad recognition of Pope Leo’s unique influence across a region where the vast majority of the population identifies as Catholic. Church groups at the diocese and parish level often form the backbone of local opposition to new mining projects, meaning the pope’s public stance can shape whether industry and community relations are confrontational or collaborative.

As the global transition to renewable energy and the expansion of advanced technology accelerates, demand for critical minerals has surged. Seventeen rare earth elements, alongside other key minerals including lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel, are irreplaceable components in everything from smartphones and semiconductors to electric vehicles and jet engines. By the latest estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey, Brazil holds the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earth oxides, trailing only China, putting Latin America at the center of global supply chain diversification efforts. The IDB currently has roughly $4 billion in critical mineral project pipelines across the region, concentrated in Chile, Argentina and Brazil, with three-quarters of that funding earmarked for partnerships with private sector firms. Ahead of his meeting with the pope, Goldfajn presented the region’s rare earth potential to European investors at a Rome finance conference.

“It’s a unique opportunity for the region, but you need to do it in the right way with the standards, the labor conditions, with the environmental conditions, the governance,” Goldfajn told the Associated Press in an interview the day before his Vatican meeting. “We have exactly the tools to do that.”

Pope Leo is uniquely positioned to evaluate the costs and benefits of mining: he spent 20 years working as a missionary in Peru, a country with extensive mineral reserves and a long history of extraction conflict. He served in three regions deeply tied to the mining industry: Chulucanas in the Archdiocese of Piura, home to large-scale copper mining projects; Trujillo, a center for gold mining; and Chiclayo, a major logistics hub for northern Peru’s extraction sector. “He must have seen both sides: the promise, the future, but also the challenges,” Goldfajn said of the pope’s decades in Peru, noting that the pope’s January meeting with mining executives was described to him as “very constructive.”

Still, all signs point to a heavy lift for Goldfajn’s pitch. Just two months after that January executive audience, the Vatican rolled out its divestment campaign, partnering with the ecumenical Church and Mining Network, a group particularly active in Latin America. The campaign urges local faith communities to review their investment holdings and divest from mining where appropriate, while supporting information sharing with Indigenous groups about extraction projects planned for their traditional lands. During his April 2026 trip to sub-Saharan Africa, Pope Leo explicitly denounced what he called the “colonization” of the continent’s mineral resources by foreign mining companies, echoing longstanding Vatican criticism of opaque, corrupt deals between extractive firms and developing world governments that leave local communities reaping few benefits. He is scheduled to visit Peru this coming November, including stops in the former mining regions where he once ministered.

Latin America’s mining sector carries a centuries-long legacy of harm, from colonial-era forced labor and mass displacement of Indigenous populations to modern-day deforestation, waterway contamination, and deadly infrastructure failures such as dam collapses. For centuries, foreign firms and colonial powers extracted vast amounts of precious minerals from the region, with very little of the generated wealth reinvested in local communities — even as silver and gold from Latin America was used to adorn Catholic churches across Europe. That critical stance on unregulated mining is not new to the papacy: Pope Francis, Pope Leo’s Argentine predecessor, dedicated significant attention to the harms of extractive industry in his landmark 2015 environmental encyclical *Laudato Si’ (Praised Be)*, highlighting the widespread pollution of groundwater, mercury contamination from gold mining, and sulfur dioxide emissions from copper extraction. Francis also emphasized that Indigenous communities must be lead dialogue partners when any large project affecting their traditional lands is under consideration.

In a public audience the same day he met Goldfajn, Pope Leo spoke to participants at a conference hosted by the Vatican’s environmental education center, named for Pope Francis’ encyclical. He again condemned the profit-over-all ideology that drives unsustainable extraction, saying it plunders the planet “at the expense of the most vulnerable and enhances the risk of dehumanization.” The Vatican has not released any official readout of the private meeting with Goldfajn, leaving unclear whether the IDB chief’s pitch shifted the pope’s perspective on responsible rare earth development.

Bryan Harris, managing partner at Latin America-focused strategic advisory firm Sabio, noted that even if the pope does not directly change global investment flows, his stance carries enormous weight for local activism across the region. “The decades he spent in Peru give him personal credibility and his messaging on mining sets the tone for how dioceses and parishes across the continent will engage with mining companies and projects,” said Harris, who advises international mining firms operating in Latin America. He added that rare earth processing carries unique environmental risks, requiring strict regulatory oversight and enforcement to prevent toxic chemical contamination of regional water supplies if projects move forward. Whether Pope Leo will be convinced that a new, just model of rare earth extraction is possible remains an open question as the region positions itself as a key player in the global critical mineral supply chain.