Russia says 650 Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow overnight, killing two and shutting all four airports

Ukraine launched one of its largest drone attacks on the Moscow region in two years overnight into Tuesday, Russian officials said, killing two people, damaging dozens of homes and halting flights at all four of the capital’s airports. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 drones flew toward the region between 8:30 p.m. Monday and 5 a.m. Tuesday Moscow time (1:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, Toronto time), that most were destroyed “at long range” and that 105 were shot down on their approach to the city, TASS reported.

The attacks did not stop at dawn. By mid-morning, Sobyanin’s running tally of drones downed on approach to Moscow since the start of the day had climbed to 161, Interfax reported. Russian figures could not be independently verified, and officials gave different counts for different areas: Moscow Oblast Governor Andrei Vorobyov said 185 drones were intercepted over 16 municipalities in the region surrounding the capital, according to the Kyiv Post.

Vorobyov first reported one death, a 20-year-old man in the settlement of Radumlya in Solnechnogorsk district, and six injuries. He later raised the toll to two after a 71-year-old man was found under the rubble of a destroyed private house in Barybino, in the Domodedovo district, where a woman was also hurt, Interfax reported. Nine people were injured in total, and 47 private homes were damaged across seven municipalities, along with four apartments in a building in Lobanovo and three cars, the governor said.

Moscow’s Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky airports stopped receiving and sending planes during the night, according to Interfax. bne IntelliNews, citing a Russian news site, said flights at the capital’s airports were allowed only by special agreement from about 3 a.m. to 4:22 a.m. Moscow time and that about 90 flights were delayed.

Ukrainian outlets focused on a fire at the Volodarskaya pumping and dispatch station near the village of Konstantinovo, about 40 kilometres from downtown Moscow and roughly 450 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Footage shared by monitoring channels appeared to show flames and smoke rising from the site, The Kyiv Independent reported, adding that it could not immediately verify the reports. The facility, which the independent Russian outlet Astra described as the Moscow region’s largest oil depot, is run by a unit of state pipeline company Transneft and can handle up to three million tonnes of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel a year, supplying Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo, according to the Kyiv Post. Russian authorities had not confirmed any damage there.

TASS, basing its count on Sobyanin’s statements, said the raid ranked among the biggest on the capital region in the past two years. The largest came on Sept. 19 and 20, when air defences shot down more than 1,600 drones, including 450 on approach to Moscow; about 600 drones targeted the capital on Aug. 15 and 16, and 548 headed toward the region on Sept. 2 and 3. A day before the latest raid, Sobyanin said 9,994 drones had flown toward the Moscow region between Sept. 1 and the morning of Oct. 5, bne IntelliNews reported.

The strike fits a widening Ukrainian campaign against Russian fuel infrastructure. It came four days after an Oct. 2 attack on the Samara pumping station, one of Transneft’s biggest hubs, the Kyiv Post reported. Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Oct. 4 that 51 per cent of Russia’s oil refining capacity had been damaged by its long-range strikes, a claim that has not been independently verified and on which Moscow has not commented, according to bne IntelliNews. On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “what’s driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz,” blaming Russian refineries “being blown up by Ukraine” for high pump prices.

Russia, meanwhile, kept up its own strikes. Drone debris fell on a residential area of Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district late Monday, setting cars ablaze, The Kyiv Independent reported, and a Russian drone hit a bridge in Zaporizhzhia overnight. Russia has said it plans to step up strikes on infrastructure targets, including in Kyiv, as winter approaches, France 24 reported.

Sources: France 24; TASS; Interfax (death toll, in Russian); Interfax (interception count, in Russian); The Kyiv Independent; Kyiv Post; bne IntelliNews.