UKRAINIAN drones have hit a Moscow oil refinery for the second time this week while Russia fired missiles at Kyiv, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeks support from the United States and Europe to reach a deal to end the war.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday that its air defences shot down 555 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, with almost 200 intercepted as they were approaching the Russian capital.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said several drones hit an oil refinery.
“Air defence forces continue to repel a massive attack. Several drones managed to reach the Moscow oil refinery,” Sobyanin said, adding that a shopping centre also suffered minor damage.
The attack on the oil facility is the second this week, after a drone attack on Tuesday halted operations at the refinery, according to the Reuters news agency, as widespread damage to Russian energy facilities worsens the country’s fuel crisis.
Reporting from Kazan, Yulia Shapovalova said the refinery is a “strategically important enterprise.”
“It provides a multi-million population of the Russian capital with around 40 percent of petrol and other oil products. It’s still burning heavily while, according to authorities, emergency services are taking measures to put out fires,” she told Al Jazeera.
The regional governor said that in the surrounding Moscow region, a high-rise residential building, an industrial facility and a number of private houses were also damaged in the drone attack. The Sheremetyevo airport, Moscow’s busiest, suspended flights and evacuated people, as several sought shelter in the car park, the airport said in a statement.
Ukrainian forces also struck a railway bridge over the North Crimean Canal during an overnight operation on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest attempt to disrupt Russian military logistics in occupied Crimea, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook.
Attacks in Ukraine
Kyiv meanwhile came under a second Russian air attack this week, as ballistic missiles were unleashed on the Ukrainian capital, city officials said.
“The enemy is attacking the capital with ballistic missiles. Stay in safe places until the air raid alert is over!” Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said in a Telegram post.
Authorities in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy said one person was killed in a drone attack.
A man was also killed in the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the number of people wounded in a Russian strike rose to 11, according to regional authorities, Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration said on Telegram.
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Audrey MacAlpine said nine locations were hit after at least 239 drones and seven ballistic missiles were launched at Ukraine overnight.
“Ukraine says that it was able to intercept the majority of them,” she added.
Earlier this week, a major attack on Kyiv by Russia killed 11 people and damaged a UNESCO-listed 1,000-year-old monastery, drawing condemnation from European leaders. Russia denied striking the monastery.
The attacks come as Zelenskyy works to pressure Russia into negotiating an end to its more than four-year-long war. Zelenskyy said he had spoken to US President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders from G7 countries to coordinate ways to end the war.
Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would continue striking targets inside Russia, describing such attacks as both a response to Russian assaults on Ukrainian cities and a means of pressuring Moscow towards peace, according to Ukrainian media outlet Ukrinform.
He warned that If Ukraine burns, Moscow will burn too, adding that it was time to end Russia’s aggression and bring the war to a close.