Moscow was fending off a “large-scale” drone attack from Ukraine, with several drones reaching an oil refinery, the city’s mayor Sergey Sobyanin said early Thursday.
Kyiv has in the past months stepped up its strikes on Russia, regularly hitting oil-processing facilities and its export hubs in a bid to sap the vital fossil fuel revenues funding Moscow’s war effort that is now in its fifth year.
“Air defence forces are continuing to repel a large-scale attack. Several drones managed to reach the MNPZ,” a major refinery in the Russian capital, Sobyanin wrote on Telegram.
The mayor said “measures are being taken to deal with the consequences”, without specifying if the refinery was damaged.
Sobyanin said just before 7:00 am (0400 GMT) that Russian air defences have destroyed 43 drones during the night.
A Ukrainian drone strike on Tuesday triggered a fire at a major oil refinery just outside Moscow and caused damage.
It was not immediately clear whether that same refinery was targeted on Thursday.
Since the war began in 2022, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with near-daily aerial barrages of drones and missiles, as Washington-led diplomatic efforts to end the conflict stalled due to the war in the Middle East.
