Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The night was long for Moscow’s air defenses, and by morning the smoke was rising from a facility few residents had ever heard of.
The Russian capital has been pressed harder than at any point since the war began, with its fuel grid turning into the main target of Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign.
A September strike already crippled the city’s main refinery; this time the pipes feeding its airports were in the crosshairs.
Between the evening of October 5 and the early hours of October 6, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 Ukrainian drones were sent at Moscow and the surrounding region, the largest single wave the capital has faced.
Russian air defenses claimed to have shot down 185 drones over the Moscow region and 105 on the approaches to the capital itself.
The main hit landed on the Volodarskaya linear production and dispatch station, operated by Transnefteprodukt, a subsidiary of the state-owned Transneft.
It is the largest oil depot in the Moscow region, with an annual throughput of about 3 million metric tons of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
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A direct line to the city’s airports
Volodarskaya is not a storage yard. It is a pipeline hub, feeding refined products through dedicated lines to the three main Moscow airports: Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo. Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency temporarily suspended operations at all three, as well as at Zhukovsky, during the attack.
Governor Andrei Vorobyov said two people were killed and nine injured in the Moscow region, and that 47 private homes were damaged across seven municipalities. One of the dead was a 20-year-old resident of the village of Radumlya in the Solnechnogorsk district.
The second blow in two weeks
The strike comes 16 days after Ukraine hit the Moscow Oil Refinery in the capital’s Kapotnya district, a Gazprom Neft facility that supplies about 40% of Moscow’s fuel market and 70% of the Moscow region’s demand for gasoline and aviation fuel.
According to RBC-Ukraine, both of the refinery’s primary oil-processing units caught fire in that strike and the plant completely halted refining.
RBC-Ukraine, citing monitoring channels, reported that the Kapotnya refinery was again likely among the sites targeted overnight, with explosions in the area still being reported around 3 a.m. Russian authorities have not confirmed damage at the plant.
Flights at Moscow’s airports resumed after 05:00, Russia’s aviation authority said.
