Ukraine's Largest Drone Strike Hits Moscow, Oil Refinery Ablaze
Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on Moscow in years, sparking fires in the Russian capital and its surrounding areas. The strike hit a major oil refinery and forced the evacuation of the country’s busiest airport.
Plumes of black smoke spread across southern Moscow as flames engulfed part of the oil refinery complex in the Kapotnya district, with a pungent and unpleasant smell hanging in the air.
The attack occurred as Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a Russia-ASEAN summit in the city of Kazan, approximately 700 kilometres east of Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the strike in a social media post, calling it a “completely justified response” to Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Russian state news agency TASS reported it was the largest attack on Moscow in at least two years. All Moscow airports were closed for several hours, causing hundreds of flight delays. Sheremetyevo, the country’s busiest airport, announced it had evacuated passengers to “safe locations” during the attack before reopening around 11:00 a.m. local time on Thursday.
“Several drones managed to reach the Moscow Oil Refinery,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote on Telegram on Thursday morning, without specifying the damage to the facility. Authorities announced they had closed traffic on nearby roads.
Sobyanin said Russian air defences shot down around 180 drones approaching Moscow, while the Russian Defence Ministry reported intercepting more than 500 Ukrainian drones across the country since Wednesday evening local time.
Another drone crashed into an apartment building in the Zhukovsky district of the Moscow region, and falling debris also sparked a fire at a shopping centre near the outskirts of Moscow, said Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov. A video on social media showed smoke billowing from the upper floors of an apartment block, with a woman behind the camera heard crying.
A separate Ukrainian drone attack in the southern Russian region of Rostov killed one person and injured at least two others, the regional governor said.
Ukraine has intensified its drone strikes against Russia in recent months, targeting oil refineries that fund Moscow’s war chest, as diplomatic talks to end the conflict, now lasting more than four years, remain deadlocked.
According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia also launched more than 200 drones and several ballistic missiles at Ukraine between Wednesday night and early Thursday morning local time.