Moscow mayor says dozens of Ukrainian drones downed in attack on Russian capital


LONDON — Dozens of Ukrainian long-range drones attacked Moscow overnight into Tuesday morning, according to the city’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, with damage confirmed at a major oil refinery and flight restrictions disrupting flights at all four of the city’s international airports.

“Over the past 24 hours, an attack by enemy drones on Moscow has continued. One of the drones damaged a facility on the territory of the Moscow Refinery. There were no casualties. Emergency services are working at the scene of the incident,” Sobyanin wrote in a post to Telegram.

Purported videos of the Gazprom-owned refinery in Moscow showed fire and a large plume of black smoke rising over the facility, which is located in the Kapotnya District to the southeast of the city.

Ukrainian forces have been expanding their drone attacks toward Moscow in recent months, as just one element of its growing long-range strike campaign into Russia — which officials in Kyiv refer to as “long-range sanctions.”

People walk through Red Square holding umbrellas as it rains in Moscow, Russia, on June 15, 2026.

Pavel Bednyakov/AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov

Tuesday marked the ninth consecutive day of Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow, according to statements issued by Sobyanin on Telegram. The number of drones that Sobyanin reported shot down on Tuesday was also the largest of any day since May 17.

Already this year, Sobyanin has reported the downing of more Ukrainian drones — 1,134 craft — than in all of 2025, when the mayor said Russian forces intercepted 734 Ukrainian drones en route to the capital.

The latest Ukrainian strikes came a day after a major Russian attack on Kyiv, which killed at least five people, damaged a historic cathedral and prompted Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin a “barbarian.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a purported video of the burning Moscow refinery on Telegram on Tuesday morning, attributing the damage to “Ukrainian long-range strikes.”

“Russia must be compelled to end the war against our people. And Ukrainian long-range weapons are one of the important components of such coercion,” Zelenskyy wrote.

“This is a just response to Russian attacks and a response to the prolongation of the war, which needs to be ended,” Zelenskyy added.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Counter-Disinformation Center operating as part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that the Moscow refinery is one of the country’s largest, with a refining capacity of around 11 million tons of oil per year. The plant, he said, accounts for some 40% of Moscow’s gasoline needs.

“Even though Putin has deployed almost all of the key air defense and missile defense systems to Moscow, this doesn’t save the Russians. Putin is not a guarantee of safety for Muscovites,” Kovalenko wrote.

Servicemen of the 9th Kairos Battalion of the “Madyar’s Birds” prepare to launch Ukrainian long-range drones from an undisclosed location in Ukraine, on May 16, 2026.

Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack on Moscow was one element of a larger wave of overnight strikes. The ministry claimed that Russian forces downed at least 172 Ukrainian drones overnight into Tuesday morning.

Russia’s federal air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya, announced flight restrictions at more than a dozen airports across southern and western Russia, including at all four of Moscow’s international airports — Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo.

Elsewhere, flight restrictions affected airports stretching from Sochi on the Black Sea coast to Nizhnekamsk in the Tatarstan Republic, some 750 miles from Ukraine.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia continued its own long-range attacks overnight. The air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 132 drones and two missiles into the country in its latest barrage, of which 114 drones were intercepted or suppressed.

Both missiles and 16 drones impacted across nine locations, the air force said.



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