Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack - Financial Times

Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack

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Ukraine hits Moscow with largest-ever drone attack

Almost 200 drones strike Russian capital, several damaging the city’s largest oil refinery

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Max Seddon in Berlin and Fabrice Deprez in Kyiv

PublishedJune 18 2026

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Video description

Smoke rises from an oil refinery near Moscow after a drone attack on Thursday

Smoke rises from an oil refinery near Moscow after a drone attack on Thursday © Reuters

Ukraine hit Moscow with nearly 200 drones in its largest-ever attack on the city on Thursday, striking the Russian capital’s largest oil refinery and sending huge plumes of smoke billowing over the city’s south.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said anti-air defences had shot down at least 194 Ukrainian drones on Thursday morning in the third consecutive day of attacks.

The apocalyptic images of flame and smoke engulfing the Russian capital were a remarkable demonstration of Ukraine’s increasing capacity to strike deep behind enemy lines with its largely homegrown long-range drones.

More than four years into President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the advance of Russian forces on the battlefield has slowed to a crawl, while Ukraine’s strikes are consistently evading Russian defences to hit military and energy infrastructure.

Video description

A Ukrainian drone hits a oil storage tank at a Moscow refinery on Thursday

A Ukrainian drone hits a oil storage tank at a Moscow refinery on Thursday © Defence of Ukraine/X

At least 16 people were injured in the strikes, including two children, local authorities said.

Several of the drones struck the Moscow Refinery in Kapotnya on the capital’s south-eastern outskirts, the largest in the metropolitan area. Ukrainian drones had also struck the oil refinery on Tuesday and previously hit it a month earlier.

Videos posted on social media showed the lid of an oil storage tanker shooting hundreds of metres into the air, lifted by a huge explosion underneath, while several other fires burned nearby.

Sobyanin said multiple drones had hit the refinery, adding that emergency services were working to put out the fires.

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The drones also struck several residential buildings in southern Moscow and the capital’s suburbs, local authorities said, as well as two of the largest shopping centres in the area.

The strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have significantly affected its fuel production capacity. Russia’s top petrol station chains set limits on how much their customers could buy across the country earlier this week.

Ukraine’s mid-range drone strikes have particularly affected supply lines to the Crimean peninsula and Russian-occupied regions in the south-east, where authorities introduced strict fuel rationing earlier this month.

!Collapsed wooden structure with scattered debris, a person in reflective gear inspects the rubble, and damaged greenhouses nearby.

*Damage following a Ukrainian drone attack outside Moscow

© Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyev's official Telegram channel/AP*