650 drones over Moscow: Ukraine's biggest strike kills two, sets oil depot ablaze

MOSCOW/KYIV: Ukraine launched one of the largest drone attacks of the war on the Moscow region overnight into Tuesday, killing two people, injuring nine and setting a major oil depot ablaze, Russian officials said. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 drones were launched toward the capital in what he called one of the largest attacks yet, with more than 130 destroyed on approach. Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov said 185 drones were downed across 16 municipalities in the region. The figures could not be independently verified. The Volodarskaya Line Production and Dispatch Station — described as Transneft's largest oil facility in the Moscow region, supplying fuel to the Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports — was hit, with footage showing flames rising from the site. A Wildberries warehouse was set on fire. Officials said 47 private houses were damaged across seven municipalities, power was cut in villages around Domodedovo, and all four Moscow airports were disrupted, with hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled. The two dead were a 71-year-old man pulled from the rubble of a house and a 20-year-old man in Radumlya in the Solnechnogorsky district, the governor said. Injuries were also reported in the Smolensk and Bryansk regions. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the long-range strikes on Russian energy and logistics targets, saying they hit billions of dollars that sustain the war machine. Ukraine's General Staff has described such strikes as an inalienable right to self-defence aimed at cutting military supply. Kyiv claimed on October 4 that more than 51 per cent of Russian refining capacity had been disabled. The same night, Russia struck back: five people were injured in Zaporizhzhia when an apartment building was hit, and drone debris damaged cars and set a roof fire at an educational institution in Kyiv's Obolonskyi district. The exchange followed Ukraine's October 2 strike on the Samara oil hub and marked a sharp escalation in the reciprocal drone war — one in which the heaviest price, as ever, is paid by civilians on both sides.