Let's say it's Ukrainian drones. Does it help Putin? I am not sure that it does.
We're 500+ days into the war that Russian officials had told the Russian public would be over back in March or April of last year.
Putin told the Russian people it was about making Russia secure, but here we are in almost August of 2023 and Ukrainian drones and missiles seem to be hitting Moscow, something that wasn't happening in January of 2022.
The last major remaining "victory" Russia has had since February of 2022 was Bakhmut, and the Russian people watching state TV saw it take 7-8 months before Russia finally took it, only now it's under heavy Ukrainian pressure. Not fucking Kyiv, not Odessa. Fucking Bakhmut, which most Russians would not have heard of, and which is the size of San Marcos as far as Americans are concerned, and around 140 miles to the Russian border.
So far, the war really hasn't touched Moscow - most of the mobilized/conscripted have been from rural/outlying areas, as well as the various minority communities.
When it was announced last fall that there were going to be increased call-ups/mobilizations, anywhere from 700,000 - 1 million got the fuck out of Dodge. Those weren't poors from the rural areas either - it was mostly those who had decent jobs and had money stashed away, with many being from Moscow/St. Petes/the next 10 or so populated cities/metros.
We (and the Russian people) just watched the biggest/main Russian PMC very nearly try and take Moscow, and not a bunch of dudes in pickups, but fucking hauling tanks and artillery on flatbeds down Russian highways and shooting down over half-a-dozen Russian aircraft. They were declared traitors by Putin, but they turned around because a deal was made with their leader, who is still very publicly in Russia and in Moscow and hanging around the Defense Ministry, and the dudes on the highways are now hanging in Belarus.
The Russian people know a fuckload of Russian soldiers have died or been wounded because when they announced they are calling up 350,000 people last fall, most people would have been curious about why they needed so many for a war that was supposed to be over 6 months ago, and they've been increasing the ages of conscription which is telling people that A) they need more meat and B) a lot of the normal military-aged crowd is either in another country, or is in uniform or is dead or wounded.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was slow (arguably during the arms race with the US, and with Afghanistan bleeding it dry) until it was fast.
The Soviets woke a whole lot of third-world countries up with the invasion of Afghanistan - it was not what countries expected out of the Soviet Union, a nation that claimed it was the friend of third-world countries. It altered relationships between nations. We see the same thing here - we see third-world countries (and a few 2nd-world) who are not seeing what Putin's talking heads on TV are saying, but instead seeing what the rest of us are seeing. More importantly, it's fucking with their food supplies or at the very least, their supplies of food and other commodities. Some of them are even calling out Putin, and he's basically telling them "shut the fuck up and don't question me, you'll get what we say you get and you should be happy, it's not your place to judge or decide". And some of these countries have a lot more people than Russia, or aren't too much smaller population-wise. And it's not like it's 1993 and these countries are dealing with Ukraine tentatively coming out from under Russia's shadow through a hard-fought rebellion - it's 2023, and they've had Ukrainian embassies, etc. for decades.
And then there's the impact Afghanistan had on the Soviet Union in terms of economics, and bleeding the military and their coffers dry. Ukraine has to be far worse.
If it's Ukrainian drones, I don't see how Putin can use this to rally the Russian population, because it's another sign that the war that Putin claims isn't impacting Russia very much is in fact impacting Russia, literally. And he can't say he invaded to make Russia safe again, because there were no Ukrainian drones hitting Moscow 18 months ago.
Obviously Gorbachev's moves towards elections was the last straw that sped everything up, meanwhile Putin is trying to keep himself in office for many more years to come and has in fact been using the Duma to enact even stricter controls over the population. Gorbachev gave the Soviet people a chance to release steam/pressure from the pressure cooker through the elections and eventual dissolution. Putin is ramping up the pressure in the cooker.