Russia says it shot down 81 drones in biggest Moscow attack in a year

Russian air defenses shot down 81 drones headed for Moscow overnight, the largest attack on the capital in more than a year and part of a far wider barrage that Russian officials said reached 556 drones across the country and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

The strikes underscored how the war’s geography has widened far beyond the front line. At least four people were killed in Russian regions, including three in the Moscow area and one in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, as drone fragments, direct hits and falling debris brought the conflict into residential neighborhoods, transport hubs and energy infrastructure.

Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed when a drone struck a home in Khimki, north of the capital, and two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki in the Mytishchi district. Rescuers were still searching through debris for another person. Sergei Sobyanin said 12 people were injured, mostly near the entrance to Moscow’s oil refinery, and that three houses were damaged. He said the refinery’s technology was not damaged. Vorobyov said several residential high-rises and infrastructure facilities were also damaged.

Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said Ukrainian forces hit an oil refinery and two oil-pumping stations in the Moscow region, describing the targets as defense-industry facilities, military infrastructure and oil logistics sites. The wording pointed to a deliberate effort to pressure Russia’s war machine by striking energy and supply links that support it, not only symbolic targets near the capital.

Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack a “justified” response to Russia’s prolongation of the war. Russia’s defence ministry said the overnight attacks were intercepted or jammed across more than a dozen regions, while Sheremetyevo airport said drone debris fell on its territory without causing damage. The spread of the strikes, from Moscow suburbs to Belgorod and beyond, showed how Ukrainian drones are increasingly forcing ordinary Russians to face disruption and danger far from the battlefield.