Russia’s attempt to defend its capital from Ukrainian drones may have produced the most spectacular damage of Thursday’s attack, with separate videos appearing to show a MANPADS missile fired beside a busy highway before a Russian air-defence weapon struck the Moscow Oil Refinery.
The extraordinary sequence was highlighted by The Enforcer during its latest Ukraine war broadcast. The channel compared footage of the roadside launch with recordings of the refinery explosion, arguing that the missile’s movement and apparent flightpath suggest the two videos may show different stages of the same disastrous interception.
The first video shows Russian personnel positioned beside a busy Moscow highway while civilian vehicles pass only metres away.
A soldier shoulders a man-portable air-defence system and fires directly above the moving traffic. A possible Chechen fighter at the scene can be heard repeatedly shouting “Mashallah” as the weapon launches.
Instead of travelling straight upwards, the missile rises, makes a pronounced turn to the right and continues towards an incoming Ukrainian drone. It appears to miss the aircraft.
Another close-range recording shows the extraordinary risks being taken by Moscow’s improvised air-defence teams. An audible lock-on signal can be heard before a Russian soldier fires a MANPADS at a low-flying Ukrainian drone from near-point-blank range.
The missile again fails to bring the drone down.
Footage recorded at the Moscow Oil Refinery appears to reveal what happened next.
As a Ukrainian drone approaches the already-burning complex, an air-defence missile races towards it from below. The weapon passes underneath the drone and crashes directly into a large oil-storage tank.
The resulting explosion sends the tank’s enormous circular roof spinning high into the air like a flying saucer.
The Enforcer’s presenters argued that the roadside missile’s sharp right turn and the subsequent trajectory visible near the refinery make it likely that the footage records the same failed interception from different locations.
The videos have not been conclusively synchronized into a single continuous recording. However, their timing, proximity and apparent trajectories strongly support the possibility that a Russian MANPADS fired above Moscow traffic missed the Ukrainian drone and continued into the refinery it was supposed to protect.
Another angle, filmed by Chinese visitors, more clearly shows an air-defence missile passing beneath the drone and striking the storage tank.
Ukraine therefore appears to have supplied the target, but Russia may have supplied the spectacular explosion.
Putin’s enormous shield shoots inward
The episode is particularly humiliating because President Vladimir Putin has spent years concentrating air-defence assets around Moscow, including systems reportedly relocated from other parts of Russia.
Open-source investigations based on satellite imagery indicate that more than 100 additional air-defence systems have been positioned around the capital since 2023. These include dozens of Pantsir units, S-300 and S-400 batteries, specialized towers, rooftop installations and several defensive rings extending into the Moscow region.
Putin has surrounded his capital with one of the densest anti-aircraft networks on the planet. Ukrainian drones penetrated it anyway—and at least one of the weapons protecting Moscow appears to have turned inward and attacked Moscow’s own refinery.
The Gazprom Neft-operated facility is located in the southeastern Kapotnya district, around 15 kilometres from the Kremlin. It supplies a substantial portion of the petrol and diesel consumed across Moscow and the surrounding region.
The refinery had already been attacked on June 16, damaging its larger crude-distillation unit. Thursday’s second assault reportedly damaged the Euro+ processing unit, pipelines, auxiliary systems and oil-product storage tanks.
Industry sources told Reuters that the damage could leave both of the plant’s principal crude-processing units unavailable, at least temporarily.
Successful interception, same disastrous result
Separate footage from the refinery shows that even a successful Russian interception produced further destruction.
A Russian air-defence missile strikes another Ukrainian drone approaching the facility. The burning wreckage then falls directly onto a low brown building and explodes.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that hundreds of Ukrainian drones were destroyed during the wider assault, including nearly 200 approaching Moscow. Nevertheless, several aircraft penetrated the capital’s layered defences and reached one of its most important fuel facilities.
The resulting footage captures the Russian defensive failure in remarkable detail: soldiers firing MANPADS above civilian traffic, missiles missing low-flying drones, one weapon apparently striking the refinery and a successful interception showering another building with explosive wreckage.
Russia has assembled an enormous air-defence umbrella over Moscow. On Thursday, Ukraine flew through it—and Moscow’s defenders apparently bombed everything underneath it.