Moscow says 650 drones flew at the capital; two people are dead

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 drones flew toward Moscow and the surrounding region between 20:30 on Monday 5 October and 05:00 on Tuesday. He said air defence destroyed most of them on distant approaches and 105 on the approach to the city itself. He later added another 29 brought down on further approaches. Governor Andrei Vorobyov, after an early count of one dead and six injured, updated the Moscow region toll to two dead and nine injured, with 47 private homes damaged in seven municipalities.

The first named dead person was a 20-year-old resident of Radumlya, a village in the Solnechnogorsk district. Vorobyov said residents of Istra and of the Volokolamsk and Domodedovo districts were also hurt, and that three of them were in hospital. In Istra, damage was reported to 10 houses in Safontyevo, Torlopovo, Gorki and Yadromino, plus outbuildings and two cars. Further damage was reported in Lobanovo and Barybino in the Domodedovo district. Vorobyov said air defence and electronic warfare destroyed 185 drones over the Moscow region. That figure and Sobyanin's 650 are not the same count. The 650 is the number the mayor said were flying toward the capital region. The 185 is the number the governor said were destroyed over his region. Drones destroyed farther out, or counted twice in official briefings, account for part of the gap. The briefings do not reconcile the two numbers.

The depot fire officials have not confirmed

Ukrainian monitoring channels and the independent Telegram channel Astra reported a fire at LPDS Volodarskaya, a linear production and dispatch station run by Transnefteprodukt. The site is described as the largest oil-product depot in the Moscow region and a node for fuel moving into the capital. Local authorities had not confirmed the fire when Meduza published its account on Tuesday morning. Rosaviatsia said restrictions on arrivals and departures at Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo had been lifted after the raid.

A fire at Volodarskaya would matter more than a broken roof in Istra. Moscow's civilian fuel supply runs through a small number of product pipelines and depots. A depot fire does not equal a lasting loss of refining capacity, which sits farther away, at plants such as the Moscow refinery, Yaroslavl and others Ukraine has already claimed to have hit. It does interrupt the last stage of delivery, and it forces night-time shutdowns at four of the capital's airports. Those shutdowns are now a routine line in Sobyanin's night notes. The casualty line is not.

How this raid sits against Sunday's claim

On Sunday the Ukrainian defence ministry said strikes on refineries in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ust-Luga, Perm, Saratov and Syzran had disabled 51 percent of Russia's oil refining capacity. Defence minister Yevhenii Khmara said the figure came from analysts at military intelligence, the general staff and the ministry. The claim has not been independently verified. The International Energy Agency has said Russian diesel output is down about 30 percent, and drivers have queued for as long as 40 hours at petrol stations. President Vladimir Putin said on 1 October that the strikes had partially achieved their aim and had cost Russia about 1 percent of GDP. Moscow has banned some diesel exports, delayed maintenance and loosened fuel-quality rules.

Tuesday's raid is a different target set: homes, a reported product depot, and the airspace over the capital, rather than a distillation column. The 20-year-old in Radumlya is the part of the story that does not depend on a percentage. Two official death counts in one morning, a depot fire the region has not confirmed, and four airports reopened by dawn are the measurable facts. The 51 percent figure remains Kyiv's assessment until tanker movements and refinery runs show it in the trade data.