Ukraine on Thursday launched its largest drone attack on Moscow in years, hitting a refinery near Moscow and other targets in Russia and occupied territories overnight.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported it had intercepted more than 500 Ukrainian drones overnight.

The large-scale attack came hours before President Vladimir Putin was set to meet Southeast Asian leaders at a summit in the city of Kazan, about 700 kilometers (435 miles) east of the capital.

“Air defense forces are continuing to repel a large-scale attack. Several drones managed to reach the MNPZ,” a major refinery in the Russian capital, the city’s mayor Sergey Sobyanin wrote on Telegram. He did not specify damage to the facility, but several Russian media outlets reported that it was on fire.

Sobyanin said just before 7am (0400 GMT) that Russian air defenses have destroyed 43 drones during the night.

Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, the busiest airport in the country, announced it had evacuated passengers to “safe locations” during the barrage and was restricting flights.

Another drone crashed into an apartment building in the Moscow region district of Zhukovsky, while drone debris sparked a fire at a shopping center near the capital’s suburbs, Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Russia has pummelled Ukraine with near-daily aerial barrages of drones and missiles since the war began in 2022. Kyiv has in the past months stepped up its strikes on Russia, regularly hitting oil-processing facilities and its export hubs in a bid to sap the vital fossil fuel revenues funding Moscow’s war effort, which is now in its fifth year. AFP