A large-scale Ukrainian drone and missile assault struck the Moscow region overnight, city officials said, damaging a major oil refinery and hitting residential areas in what Russian authorities described as the capital’s biggest aerial attack to date.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defenses shot down some 450 drones aimed at the city in “the most massive” attack he has seen. Regional governor Andrei Vorobyev reported civilian casualties: a 44-year-old woman was killed when a drone struck a three-storey residential building in Sofyino, and an elderly man died after a private house was hit in the Orekhovo-Zuevo district. Vorobyev added that at least five others, including two children, were injured in those strikes.
Videos circulating on social media showed explosions in Moscow’s night sky and a burning warehouse, though the footage has not been independently verified. Sobyanin said one drone hit a building near a central boulevard and another struck the oil refinery, damaging key units. Ukraine’s defence ministry claimed the site supplies more than a third of the Moscow region’s fuel and provides petrol, diesel and aviation fuel to Russia’s military.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, confirmed Kyiv had targeted a “key” Russian oil facility and a logistics hub in the region with drones and missiles. Ukraine framed the strikes as an effort to degrade Russian military supply lines, with its defence minister arguing such hits weaken the enemy’s capacity to sustain the invasion.
Moscow’s airport infrastructure saw disruption during the attack: Sheremetyevo warned of temporary overnight restrictions, and Vnukovo suspended all arrivals and departures until morning. Both airports later resumed operations but cautioned that some flights might still face delays.
The assault on the Moscow region coincided with continued hostilities elsewhere in Ukraine. Kyiv officials reported multiple civilian deaths from Russian strikes over the weekend. In the Kyiv region, a mother and her two young children were killed in an attack in Fastiv. Another child succumbed to injuries after a separate strike in Vyshhorod. In the Sumy region, four people died when a Russian drone hit the car they were traveling in. Ukrainian leaders also said a monastery in Kherson was struck, leaving one clergy member dead and four injured.
Russian state media reported an election official was among two people killed when a drone struck a bus in a Moscow-controlled area of Kherson. Mayor Sobyanin suggested the Moscow-region attack was an attempt to disrupt Russia’s parliamentary elections, which were underway over the weekend. Russian elections are tightly managed by the Kremlin and criticized internationally as lacking freedom and transparency.
The intensification of strikes by both sides has recently targeted energy production, transport facilities and logistics hubs—critical infrastructure that supports military operations. This escalation continued despite claims by US President Donald Trump on social media that both Russia and Ukraine had agreed not to target energy sites.
In a separate development, Trump signed a US sanctions bill aimed at penalizing Russia’s economy by permitting tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil and gas, including China and India. The law grants the US president authority to impose up to 100% tariffs on large purchasers of Russian energy, a move intended to further squeeze Moscow financially.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched by President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, has since evolved into protracted conflict marked by cross-border strikes and mounting civilian tolls. The latest attacks on both sides highlight the widening scope of the war, as Ukrainian forces press strikes into Russian territory while Moscow continues to target Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Civilian casualties and damage to energy and transport networks are likely to intensify humanitarian and logistical pressures on both countries as the conflict continues.
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