MOSCOW — Ukraine launched a new wave of drone attacks on Russia early Thursday, with the majority targeting Moscow. It amounted to one of the largest attacks on the Russian capital since the Kremlin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defenses destroyed nearly 200 Ukrainian drones on approach to the capital — but acknowledged several had managed to hit the city's main oil refinery for the second time this week.
Videos circulating on social media showed drones repeatedly striking the facility, sending large fireballs upward — and expletives tumbling out of many a Russian mouth.
In a separate instance, a drone explosion sent the lid of a round oil container rocketing skyward. While the scene was very much real, it resembled a CGI effect from a Hollywood movie.
Russian intercepts appear to have played a role in some of the damage. One intercept sent a drone crashing into a megamall in southeast Moscow, setting the complex ablaze. In another instance, a drone slammed into a high-rise apartment building. Whether the building was the target or been damaged due to city air defenses wasn't clear.
Moscow authorities reported 17 people injured in all.
Even hours after the attack, plumes of black smoke massed along the Moscow skyline — and all four of the city's airports suspended operations for much of the day.
There was no immediate response by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the attacks. The Kremlin leader wasn't in Moscow, having traveled to nearby Kazan to host a regional Asian summit.
Hard-line nationalists said there was little doubt the Moscow attack undermined Kremlin claims that its "special military operation" in Ukraine was firmly under control.
"What else has to happen? What else needs to happen before we start fighting for real?" wrote Konstantin Malofeev, a businessman who funds the nationalist news service Tsargrad.
In recent months, Ukraine has time and again attacked Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to both dent the Kremlin's war chest and bring the reality of a war that has ravaged Ukraine home to Russians as well.
In a statement released online, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the latest attacks a "fully justified" response to intense Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.
Zelenskyy also painted the attack as a message: "It is time the war ended and Russia must take the necessary steps in diplomacy," he wrote.
Yet within hours, Russia's Defense Ministry announced it had carried out "precision strikes" on Ukrainian defense and energy facilities in response to Ukraine's drone attack.
The back and forth came as President Trump has expressed an on-again, off-again desire to reengage on the Ukraine issue for the first time in months, now that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to a preliminary deal to extend the ceasefire.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Thursday that Russia was expecting the return of White House envoys Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, to Moscow soon, even as dates had not yet been determined.
Ushakov also suggested the meeting would serve as something of a course corrective, given the recent lull in direct U.S.-Russian negotiations over Ukraine.
The Kremlin aide said Trump recently had been fed "unhelpful if not harmful ideas" at the G7 summit in France, where European leaders argued Ukraine now had the upper hand in the war.
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