May 17 (Reuters) - At least four people were killed, including three in the Moscow region, after Ukraine launched its biggest overnight drone attack on the Russian capital in more than a year, local officials said on Sunday.
A fourth person was killed in the Belgorod region bordering northeastern Ukraine, local authorities said, while Russia's defence ministry said that by midday more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones had been downed over the country in the past 24 hours.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had vowed retribution on Friday following Russia's heaviest drone and missile attack on Kyiv over a two-day period since the war started more than four years ago.
Confirming the attack, Zelenskiy posted a video on X of a drone in flight, columns of black smoke and fire crews trying to extinguish flames.
"Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and its attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified," Zelenskiy said.
He added that Ukraine was able to strike targets more than 500 km (310 miles) from the border despite dense Russian air defences around Moscow.
"We are clearly telling the Russians: Their state must end its war," he said.
Speaking later in his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Ukraine's increased military activity had produced a "change in the balance of actions at the front, which is now tangible."
"For instance, the activity indicators for today are such that our active measures are greater than those of Russia. This is a very substantial result," he said, without elaborating.
The Ukrainian military's General Staff, posting on Telegram, said one strike had triggered a fire at a plant outside Moscow engaged in production of high-precision weapons. It also said a command point overseeing drone flights had been hit in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
Russia's foreign ministry accused Kyiv of targeting civilians.
"To the sound of Eurovision songs, the Kyiv regime, financed by the EU, carried out yet another mass terrorist attack," TASS news agency cited the ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Both sides deny deliberately targeting civilians.
LONG-RANGE ATTACKS
Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on targets deep inside Russia in recent weeks, aiming to knock out oil refineries, depots and pipelines, as both sides seek to degrade each other's infrastructure.
TASS cited Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin as saying air defences had destroyed 81 drones headed for Moscow since midnight, the largest attack on the capital in more than a year.
Sobyanin said 12 people were wounded, mostly near the entrance to Moscow's oil refinery, while three houses were damaged. The "technology" of the refinery was not damaged, he added.
Moscow regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said a woman was killed when a home was hit in Khimki, north of the capital, adding that rescuers were searching the debris for another person. Two men were killed in the village of Pogorelki in the Mytishchi district.
Several residential high-rises and infrastructure facilities were damaged, he said.
The country's largest airport, Moscow's Sheremetyevo, said drone debris had fallen on its territory but caused no damage.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Ron Popeski, Mark Porter and Chris Reese)
