Ukraine has launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of the full-scale war, sparking fires in and around the Russian capital11:51, 18 Jun 2026Updated 12:13, 18 Jun 2026Ukraine has launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the start of the full-scale war, with close to 200 drones hitting targets and sparking fires around the Russian capital.‌The strikes on Thursday hit a major oil refinery in south-east Moscow and forced evacuations at the country’s busiest airport officials said.‌Dramatic pictures showed flames tearing through the Moscow Oil Refinery as huge columns of black smoke billowed across the capital's southern skyline. Seventeen people were injured in the Moscow region, according to local governor Andrei Vorobyov.‌A drone crashed into an apartment building in the Moscow region district of Zhukovsky, while debris from another strike sparked a fire at a shopping centre on the capital's outskirts. A separate Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's southern Rostov region left one person dead and at least two injured, local governor Yury Slyusar said.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the strikes in a post on social media, calling them a “fully justified response” to Russian attacks on Ukraine.‌It is the second time this week and the third time in a month that Kyiv has hit the Moscow Oil Refinery in Kapotnya District. "It is time the war ended, and Russia must take the necessary steps in diplomacy," Zelensky said.Content cannot be displayed without consentThe attack was the largest on Moscow in at least two years, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported. It is the second time this month that Kyiv has launched a major attack during an international summit, having targeted Saint Petersburg at the start of a landmark economic forum near the city.‌The barrage came as Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Southeast Asian leaders at a summit in the central city of Kazan, about 700 kilometres east of Moscow. Putin has not commented on the large-scale attack on the Russian capital.Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin wrote on Telegram early on Thursday that "several drones" had hit the Moscow Oil Refinery, without specifying damage to the facility.‌All of Moscow’s airports were shut for hours, leading to hundreds of flight delays. Sheremetyevo International Airport - the country's busiest - announced it had evacuated passengers to "safe locations" during the barrage, before it reopened at around 11am local time.Russian air defences shot down around 180 drones on approach to Moscow, Sobyanin said, while the defence ministry reported it had intercepted more than 500 Ukrainian drones across the entire country overnight.Kyiv has stepped up its drone strikes on Russia in recent months, hitting oil refineries that fund Moscow’s war chest, as diplomatic talks on ending the more than four-year conflict remain stalled. It was the second Ukrainian strike on the Moscow refinery this week.‌Content cannot be displayed without consentRussia also launched more than 200 drones and multiple ballistic missiles at Ukraine between late Wednesday and early Thursday, according to the Ukrainian air force.Despite the economic and social effects of his four-year offensive on Ukraine, a recent spate of Ukrainian attacks has forced the Kremlin to respond.‌After Kyiv launched similar attacks on Saint Petersburg during Putin’s flagship economic conference earlier this month, the Russian leader promised to bolster air defences. And Russia’s federal aviation regulator introduced a ban on civilian drones and light aircraft around Moscow’s airspace earlier this week, amid the strikes.Russian authorities restrict the publishing of pictures and videos from sites hit by Ukrainian drones, and state media was yet to publish any imagery from the scene of the attack — the thick smoke visible from the city centre.Article continues belowAt the G7 summit in France earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said Moscow should "make a deal" to end the Ukraine war as Russia’s advances have slowed.Russia’' 2022 offensive on Ukraine has become Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, with hundreds of thousands of people killed.