Ukraine Hits Moscow Oil Depot in 650-Drone Barrage, Killing Two, Russian Officials Say

Since Russia's wartime parliamentary elections wrapped up Sept. 20 with what Moscow called the largest-ever drone assault on the capital, Ukraine has kept grinding down Russian oil infrastructure. Overnight between Oct. 5 and Oct. 6, Kyiv launched another major wave, roughly 650 drones aimed at Moscow and the surrounding oblast, according to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Two people died. Moscow regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said a 71-year-old man was killed in a southern Moscow suburb and a 20-year-old man died in a village northwest of the city. Russian state news agency Tass, cited by the South China Morning Post, called it the second-largest drone attack on the Moscow region in the past two years.

Reports on the number injured varied. Newsweek, citing Vorobyov, put the figure at nine. Kyiv Post, also citing Vorobyov, reported six injured and said more than 10 private homes were damaged in the towns of Istra, Lobanovo and Radumlya. Both figures trace back to the same regional governor, suggesting an evolving casualty count rather than conflicting independent tallies.

The target: a major fuel depot

The apparent centerpiece of the strike was the Volodarskaya Linear Production and Dispatch Station, near the village of Konstantinovo roughly 40 kilometers from downtown Moscow. Telegram channel Exilenova+ and Russian independent outlet Astra reported the facility caught fire; the Kyiv Independent said it could not immediately verify the footage.

The depot is operated by Transnefteprodukt, part of Russia's state pipeline company Transneft, and can process up to 3 million metric tons of fuel a year, according to Astra. It feeds gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to Moscow's three major airports, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo. Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, imposed flight restrictions at all three plus Zhukovsky airport overnight, lifting them after 5 a.m. Moscow time once the attack subsided, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Sobyanin's running tally through the night, posted on Telegram, climbed from 13 drones downed shortly after 2:30 a.m. Kyiv time to 93 by roughly 3 a.m., before his morning summary put the total at 650 drones detected between 8:30 p.m. Oct. 5 and 5 a.m. Oct. 6, with 105 destroyed as they approached the city itself. Newsweek reported the overall figure as "nearly 700."

Part of a wider pattern against refineries

This strike did not happen in isolation. The Kyiv Post reported it came days after Ukraine struck the Samara Linear Production and Dispatch Station, Russia's largest oil hub, on Oct. 2, and after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak acknowledged attacks on four unnamed refineries that same night. Novak said Russian authorities were tightening refinery security and considering delaying planned modernization work to cope with the damage.

The Kyiv Independent reported that Ukraine's Defense Ministry claimed on Oct. 4 that more than 51% of Russia's oil refining capacity had been disabled by Ukrainian strikes to date. That figure is Kyiv's own assessment and has not been independently verified by neutral sources.

The campaign lands squarely in the middle of a separate political fight. A day before this attack, President Trump blamed Ukrainian refinery strikes, along with gasoline formulations in Democrat-led states, for elevated U.S. gas prices, arguing that disruption from the Iran war was no longer the main driver, according to the Kyiv Post. That claim remains contested and was the subject of separate coverage; nothing in this attack's reporting resolves which factor is driving pump prices more.

A fair question about civilian risk

Russian officials frame these barrages as indiscriminate attacks on populated areas rather than surgical strikes on military-linked infrastructure, pointing to the two civilian deaths and damaged homes in Istra, Lobanovo and Radumlya. That is a legitimate concern: when hundreds of drones are fired at a metro region of more than 20 million people, some will miss their intended industrial targets and land in residential areas, regardless of Kyiv's stated aim of hitting oil depots and pipelines.

At the same time, none of the sources reviewed here show Ukraine targeting civilian areas directly, and the depot, airports and pipeline infrastructure struck are overwhelmingly tied to Russia's war economy, not civilian life. The tension between those two facts, legitimate military targets located inside a dense urban region, is unresolved by anything in Tuesday's reporting and will likely recur with every subsequent strike.

Ukraine's General Staff, in a separate update reported by the Kyiv Independent, claimed Russia has lost 1,544,260 troops since Feb. 24, 2022, including 1,540 in the preceding 24 hours. That figure is Kyiv's own claim and has not been verified by an independent party. Rosaviatsia has not said whether the Volodarskaya depot's fuel output to Moscow's airports will face longer-term disruption, and no outlet has confirmed how much of the facility's capacity was actually destroyed versus merely damaged.