A new analysis suggests that the blast that struck an oil storage facility near Moscow on Thursday was caused by a Russian air-defense missile that missed its target, not a Ukrainian drone as initially thought. The assessment comes from a single source, which posted footage it says shows the interceptor veering off course and hitting the depot. The original strike was reported earlier this evening.
A new single-source analysis posted minutes after The Zioneer's initial report (Thu 22:49 Jerusalem) claims the blast at the Moscow oil storage facility was a Russian air-defense interceptor veering off course — an 'own goal' — rather than a Ukrainian drone or missile. The footage, attributed to a Russian-language source, purportedly shows the interceptor heading for its target and then careening into the depot. The claim remains unverified by independent sources; the Russian defense ministry has not commented.
The Zioneer first reported the strike at 22:49 Jerusalem, assessing it as a Ukrainian drone or missile hit based on a single source. Within the same evening, our thread tracked a wave of drone attacks on Moscow's energy infrastructure: at 22:08 Jerusalem, footage showed a Ukrainian kamikaze drone tearing the roof off a fuel tank at a Moscow refinery; at 14:44 Jerusalem, a Ukrainian UAV was caught on a construction crane en route to the same complex. The new own-goal claim revises the initial assessment but carries the same confidence level — a single source, no corroboration.
The wider wave of strikes on Russian energy infrastructure has been documented extensively by The Zioneer. On Sun Jun 14, Ukrainian drones struck a fuel storage facility in Yaroslavl (19:05 Jerusalem), and President Zelensky confirmed strikes on an oil facility in the same region and an explosives plant in Tula (12:10 Jerusalem). Earlier in the week (Tue Jun 16), multiple reports described the largest drone raid on Moscow since the war began, with a fuel storage lid lifted intact at the refinery.
Neither the original cause of the blast nor the revised own-goal version has been corroborated by a second party. The footage's authenticity and chain of custody are not independently confirmed. Whether the depot was struck by a Ukrainian munition or a Russian interceptor remains an open question.
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