Oil refinery 120 miles south east of Moscow 'hit in mass drone attack' by Ukraine on Russia

Ukraine drones hit an oil refinery east of Moscow in a mass attack on Russia, according to military sources.

The oil plant in Ryazan, 120 miles south east of the capital, was targeted, as was a microelectronics production plant in Bryansk, western Russia, according to Ukraine’s military.

It said the attacked facilities were involved in supplying Vladimir Putin’s army.

Pavel Malkov, the Ryazan regional governor, said emergency services were tackling the aftermath of the attack on the city which reportedly involved 20 drones.

Footage was shared on social media that was said to show the attack.

Ukrainian drones also recently hit an oil depot in Engels in southern Russia which supplied the air base for Vladimir Putin’s nuclear bomber fleet.

In Moscow, the Ministry of Defence said Russian air defences repelled a massive Ukrainian drone attack overnight, intercepting and destroying 121 drones targeting 13 regions, including the capital.

The ministry said six drones had been destroyed over the Moscow region and one over the capital itself.

Dozens more drones had targeted other regions, including those that border Ukraine and Kursk, where Ukrainian troops hold a chunk of land seized last summer which Russian and North Korean soldiers are seeking to recapture.

Twenty drones targeted the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, the ministry said, amid reports of a blaze at an oil refinery.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said on Friday it had also fought off a Russian drone attack and shot down 25 of 58 drones launched by Russia in an overnight assault.

Ukraine’s interior ministry said drone debris had killed two men and a woman in the central Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.

Ukrainian officials have said that Russian forces launched more than 7,000 drones in 2024, at least twice as many as in 2023.

Most were shot down or redirected by electronic warfare, but many still hit their targets.

Ukraine has developed drones that can fly more than 900 miles to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Friday that air defences had intercepted attacks by Ukrainian drones at four locations around the Russian capital.

Air defences southeast of the capital in Kolomna and Ramenskoye had repelled “enemy” drones, without specifying how many, he added.

Mr Sobyanin said two drones also headed for Moscow had been downed by air defences in Podolsk, south of the capital, and he reported a single drone downed in Troitsky, southwest of the capital and in Shchyolkovo, to the northeast.

Rosaviatsiya, the federal aviation agency, said two Moscow airports, Vnukovo and Domodedovo, were handling flights after suspending operations for a time.

In the city of Kursk, Mayor Igor Kutsak said the overnight attack damaged power lines and cut off electricity to one city district.

The Defence Ministry said drones had also been destroyed over the border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The Saratov, Rostov, Voronezh, Tula, Oryol and Lipetsk regions were also targeted.