650 drones in one night towards Moscow: the largest oil depot in the Moscow region is on fire

From 8:30 pm on 5 October until 5 am on 6 October, Moscow and the Moscow region spent the night under one of the most massive Ukrainian drone attacks in recent times. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that in just over eight hours as many as 650 unmanned aircraft had been sent towards the Moscow region.

The official version is familiar from previous nights: most of the drones, according to Sobyanin, were destroyed far from the city, and 105 were shot down as they approached the capital. It sounds reassuring. Except the mayor's statements don't explain why the largest oil depot in the Moscow region was burning in the morning.

The fire broke out near Konstantinovo, at the "Volodarskaya" complex. Footage on social media shows tall flames and thick black smoke, and local and Ukrainian sources say the blaze started after a drone attack. This is no ordinary storage site. Around 3 million tonnes of fuel - petrol, diesel and jet fuel - pass through "Volodarskaya" every year. The complex has 27 tanks with a total capacity of about 250,000 cubic metres and is directly connected by pipeline to Moscow's three main airports: Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo.

The price wasn't paid only in concrete and steel. Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said a 20-year-old man was killed in the village of Radumlya, in the Solnechnogorsk district. A 71-year-old man was found dead under the rubble of a house in Barybino. Nine more people were injured, three of whom remain in hospital. Houses, outbuildings and cars were damaged in several settlements, and fires broke out in a number of places after debris from downed drones fell.

The night also paralysed the airports. Restrictions were introduced at Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky, with Rosaviatsia, the aviation agency, adjusting operations according to the situation in the air. The restrictions were later lifted. Russian state media described it as one of the biggest drone attacks on Moscow and its surroundings in the past two years.

This is the pattern of a war now entering its fifth year: Kyiv strikes ever deeper into Russia, Moscow keeps up massive attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, and both sides count downed aircraft like goals in a match. The Balkans know that arithmetic from official statements - the number of targets destroyed is always bigger than the number hit, right up until someone dies under the rubble of their own home.

Are 650 drones in one night a new threshold or just a new routine? And how many more nights like this will it take for someone at the negotiating table to realise that this war no longer has a safe home front?