Ukraine launches major drone attack on Russia’s Moscow region, killing two

Ukraine has launched a major drone attack on Moscow, killing two people and setting fire to a warehouse in the capital city, Russian officials say.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Tuesday that the overnight assault involved 650 drones heading towards the city, most of which were shot down, as both sides intensify long-range strikes on infrastructure before winter.

Regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said one person was killed in Radumlya and another was killed in Barbybino. He said seven people had been injured and that 47 houses, four apartments and three cars had been damaged.

He said 185 drones were “destroyed or neutralised” over the wider region.

Prominent war blogger Yuri Podolyaka said an oil storage tank was hit at the Volodarskaya oil storage and distribution facility, the biggest in the Moscow region. The facility stores diesel, petrol and jet fuel. There was no official confirmation that it had been hit.

Volodarskaya is one of the major hubs in the distribution system of Transneft and is linked to Moscow’s main oil refinery. It supplies fuel to all three of the capital’s large airports.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted oil refineries, depots and export terminals in ⁠an effort to deprive Moscow of the revenues it needs to ⁠finance the war that Russia began in February 2022.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Dmitry Medvenko said the attack ended a relative lull in large Ukrainian strikes on Moscow since September 20.

Separately on Tuesday, a Ukrainian drone attack on a minibus in the Russian-occupied part of the Ukrainian Zaporizhia region killed three people, Moscow-installed authorities said.

Russia has recently intensified ⁠attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, sending waves of missiles and drones by night and day. Its latest targets have included bridges across the Dnipro River.

Kremlin-appointed official Yevgeny Balitsky said on Telegram that a Ukrainian drone hit the minibus close to a village near the front line, killing “three people, including the driver” and wounding three passengers.

Both Russia and Ukraine have increased strikes in the fifth year of the war, with diplomacy so far failing to end fighting and the United Nations warning of a significant rise in civilian deaths.