On the morning of 18 June, Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, the capital of Russia, reported a drone attack on the Moscow Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district.
Sobyanin spoke of a massive drone attack on Moscow, stating that 43 drones had allegedly been shot down. At the same time, he said, several drones “managed to reach the Moscow Oil Refinery, and measures are being taken to deal with the aftermath”.
Russian Telegram channels, citing eyewitnesses, are reporting fires following the attack in Moscow and thick smoke hanging over the city.
In addition, there are reports of attacks in the Rostov and Belgorod regions of Russia. The Russian Telegram channel Astra reports that a fire broke out at an oil refinery in Gukovo, in the Rostov region, as a result of the strike, whilst in Shebekino, in the Belgorod region, a warehouse containing flammable or combustible materials is on fire. The authorities in these regions of the Russian Federation have not provided any details about what was hit.
The Ukrainian military has not yet commented on the attack.
The Moscow oil refinery in Kapotna had already been targeted by a Ukrainian strike earlier this week, on 16 June. Following this, Reuters, citing two anonymous industry sources, reported that the oil refinery in Moscow – which is the largest supplier of fuel to the Moscow Region – had halted operations following the attack by Ukrainian drones on 16 June. The journalists’ sources reported that the strike on the oil refinery, owned by Gazprom Neft, in south-east Moscow had damaged the primary processing unit, which accounts for 53 per cent of the refinery’s capacity.
On 16 June, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine noted that the Moscow Oil Refinery is involved “in supplying the occupying forces; the plant’s output accounts for more than 38 per cent of the capital region’s fuel consumption; in particular, the refinery supplies aviation fuel to the airports ’Domodedovo’, ‘Vnukovo’, ‘Sheremetyevo’ and ‘Zhukovsky’. The plant’s refining capacity exceeds 12 million tonnes of crude oil per year.”