Ukrainian drones strike Moscow oil refinery for second time in three days, igniting fire and halting flights

Attack on the refinery

Ukrainian drones struck the Gazprom Neft oil refinery in Moscow's southeastern Kapotnya district in the early hours of 18 June, igniting what independent outlet Astra described as at least five separate fires. Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin acknowledged on Telegram that "several drones managed to reach the Moscow oil refinery." Videos shared on social media showed a powerful explosion, thick black smoke, and flames engulfing fuel storage tanks.

Several drones managed to reach the Moscow oil refinery.

Scale of the assault

Russian air defences intercepted around 180 drones over the capital, Sobyanin said, while the defence ministry reported a total of 555 drones destroyed over several regions during the night. The Kremlin-critical channel Doschd called it the largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of the war, surpassing the previous peak of 74 drones intercepted on 11 March 2025.

The air defence forces continue to repel a large-scale attack.

Impact on infrastructure and civilian areas

The strike forced a temporary halt to flights at all major Moscow airports, Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, and Zhukovsky, and traffic on the Moscow Ring Road near the refinery was stopped. Governor of Moscow Oblast Andrey Vorobyov reported damage to residential buildings: a multi-storey apartment block in the Zhukovsky district was hit and evacuated, a house in Elektrostal sustained damage with one woman sustaining a minor shoulder injury, and debris from a downed drone damaged a gym, shopping centre, and industrial zone in Lyubertsy. Fires were also reported in houses in Chekhov and Pavlovsky Posad. No fatalities have been confirmed.

A multi-storey apartment block was damaged and its residents evacuated.

Previous strike and strategic context

The refinery was first hit by Ukrainian drones on 16 June, just two days earlier. That attack damaged a processing unit responsible for about 53 percent of the plant's capacity, according to Reuters sources. Gazprom Neft denied the unit was knocked out, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike a "just response" to Russian air raids and noted that Ukrainian forces had struck targets 500 kilometres from the front line. The Moscow refinery, one of Russia's largest with a capacity of 11 million tonnes per year, supplies a significant portion of the capital's fuel, up to 40 percent of Moscow's fuel market and around 70 percent of its gasoline, according to Il Messaggero.

It was a just response to Russian air attacks, striking the refinery from a distance of about 500 kilometres.

Wider attacks and response

Reports from the occupied Crimean peninsula indicated that Ukrainian drones also struck a railway bridge, causing a fire and about 20 explosions, according to the monitoring group Krymskiy Veter. The repeated strikes on energy infrastructure deep inside Russia are part of a Ukrainian campaign to disrupt fuel supplies to the Russian military and undermine Moscow's war funding. As the war passes its fourth year, such long-range drone attacks have become more frequent, testing Russia's air defences even around its capital.