Ukraine Hits Moscow Oil Refinery Again in Record Drone Assault
Nearly 200 drones were downed over Moscow as Kyiv hit the Gazprom Neft refinery again, and Zelensky said it is time the war ended.
Black smoke hung over southern Moscow at dawn on Thursday after Ukrainian drones struck and set fire to the Moscow Oil Refinery, the second hit on the plant in a week and, by Russia's own count, the heaviest drone assault the capital has faced since the war began more than four years ago.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences were "repelling a massive attack" that ran from about 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., and that several drones reached the Gazprom Neft-run refinery roughly 15 kilometres (9 miles) southeast of the Kremlin. He later put the number downed near the city at 194, well above the previous record of 74 set in March. Russia's Defence Ministry said 555 drones were intercepted across the country and annexed Crimea overnight.
The target was not symbolic. The refinery supplies around a third of Moscow's gasoline and fuel, according to The Moscow Times, and it was already offline after a strike on Tuesday. Kyiv has spent the spring methodically burning Russia's refining capacity, and the effect now shows at the pump: fuel rationing has crept into dozens of Russian regions, and Russia is reported to be importing gasoline by sea this month to cover the shortfall.
President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the strike within hours, calling it a fully justified response to Russian attacks on our cities and communities
in a post on X.
"It is time the war ended, and Russia must take the necessary steps in diplomacy."
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, writing on X
Post by @ZelenskyyUa
For Muscovites, the war has edged closer. Sobyanin said debris from intercepted drones fell on the Sadovod market, one of the city's largest, damaging a building; no injuries were reported there. Sheremetyevo, Russia's busiest airport, evacuated passengers and halted flights, and all the capital's major airports later suspended operations. Aeroflot and Rossiya cancelled more than 170 flights. The restrictions even reached Kazan, where President Vladimir Putin was due to host Southeast Asian leaders at an ASEAN summit.
The night ran both ways. Russia fired at least seven ballistic missiles and 239 drones at Ukraine, the country's General Staff said, and Ukrainian defences brought down 216 of them. In the southern Russian region of Rostov, local authorities said one person was killed and two injured when attacks damaged a locomotive and set buildings alight. It is the same long-range campaign that this month set fire to Kyiv's ancient Pechersk Lavra, and that ABC News reports has escalated sharply in recent weeks.
The timing matters as much as the tonnage. The strike landed as G7 leaders wrapped a summit that hardened its line on Moscow's oil revenue, and hours before NATO defence ministers gathered in Brussels with Ukraine's security on the agenda. Kyiv's deep strikes have become its main instrument of pressure while the front lines barely move, and the refinery that feeds the capital is now a front of its own. If the fuel keeps burning, the cost of the war arrives inside Russia, in queues at petrol stations and grounded flights, rather than only at the border.
