Black oil-filled raindrops fell on parts of Moscow on Thursday after a major Ukrainian drone attack targeted the city and hit an oil refinery as the Russia-Ukraine war continues to escalate.
Thick black smoke could be seen in the skies of Moscow following the attack, and at least 17 people were wounded by the drones, according to Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow Oblast.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, more than 190 Ukrainian drones were downed in the Moscow region, part of a swarm of 555 drones that were intercepted across Russia, one of the largest Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory of the war. At least one person was killed in Russia’s southern Rostov region.
According to the BBC, the attack marked the third time this month that Ukrainian drones targeted the Kapotnya refinery in southeast Moscow, which was hit by a wave of drones on Thursday. Ukraine has continued to ramp up its attacks on Russian oil infrastructure as its NATO backers have escalated seizures of ships carrying Russian oil.
Ukrainian officials said the attack on Moscow was a response to Russia’s ramped-up missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, which Russian officials say is retaliation for the rising civilian casualties caused by Ukrainian drones, as the two sides are locked in a pattern of escalation.
More escalations appear to be coming as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that in response to Thursday’s drone, Russia will launch strikes in Ukraine on a “mass scale.”
Ukraine is known to use intelligence from the US and NATO for its long-range drone attacks inside Russia, and the US has helped build up Ukraine’s drone industry, meaning that such attacks always risk a potential escalation between Russia and NATO.
