A major fire broke out at the Shaturskaya State District Power Plant (GRES) in Russia’s Moscow region on Sunday after what local authorities said was a Ukrainian drone attack, in one of the deepest confirmed strikes on Russia’s power infrastructure since the start of the full-scale war.

The plant, located near the town of Shatura roughly 100–120 kilometres east of Moscow, was hit in the early hours of 23 November. The governor of Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, said several unmanned aerial vehicles had reached the site, causing a blaze on the territory of the station.

According to Vorobyov, some drones were destroyed by air defences, but “several fell on the territory of the station”, igniting equipment and triggering an emergency response. He said the fire had been localised and that electricity supply in the town had been maintained by switching consumers to reserve lines. To stabilise the heating system, the authorities dispatched mobile modular boiler units to the district.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry reported that four transformers caught fire at the site, with the blaze initially covering three of them over an area of about 65 square metres. More than 130 personnel and nearly 50 vehicles were involved in firefighting and recovery operations. No casualties had been officially reported by Sunday afternoon.

Videos posted on Russian social media channels during the night and early morning appear to show at least two waves of incoming drones, followed by explosions and a sustained fire at the power station. Later clips show residents watching further impacts in daylight and long columns of smoke rising above the plant. Independent open-source analysts have geolocated the footage to the Shaturskaya facility and suggested that several high-voltage transformers and associated equipment were hit.

Some Ukrainian OSINT teams, analysing satellite imagery and close-up video, have estimated that up to 900 MW of the plant’s generating capacity may have been affected, including damage to transformers linked to a 400 MW combined-cycle gas turbine unit. These claims cannot be independently verified, but they point to the possibility of prolonged disruption at parts of the site even if core structures remain standing.

Shaturskaya GRES is one of the largest thermal power plants in central Russia and a key element of the Moscow region’s grid. Operated by Unipro, it has an installed electrical capacity of about 1,500 MW across seven units: six older gas- and fuel-oil-fired steam blocks and a modern 400 MW GE-designed combined-cycle unit commissioned in 2010. The station also provides district heating and has its own fuel, rail and communications infrastructure.

Russian commentators have long described Shaturskaya as an important back-up source for Moscow, capable of operating in an isolated mode if parts of the capital’s grid fail. Anadolu Agency quoted regional officials as stressing that emergency switching to reserve lines had prevented power cuts in the town of Shatura itself, although residents reported temporary loss of heating as systems were restarted.

Ukrainian media and officials attributed the strike to domestically produced long-range “Liutyi” one-way attack drones, which have been used repeatedly against Russian oil refineries and other strategic sites deep inside Russia. The Liutyi family of UAVs, developed by Ukrainian industry since 2022, has a reported range of around 1,000 kilometres and has been employed in prior attacks documented by Ukrainian and international outlets.

The Ukrainian government had not formally claimed responsibility for the Shatura operation by the time of writing, in line with its usual practice regarding strikes on Russian territory. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously stated, however, that Ukraine will continue to use domestically produced long-range drones to hit “strategic targets” in Russia as part of what Kyiv presents as a campaign to reduce Moscow’s capacity to wage war.

Sunday’s incident is the latest in a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure this month. On 6 November, drones struck the Kostroma power station in Volgorechensk, one of Russia’s largest thermal plants, causing a major fire at a gas facility near the site. In recent weeks, Ukrainian drones have also been reported hitting oil refineries in Ryazan and other regions, contributing to what analysts describe as a sustained pressure campaign on Russia’s fuel and power sectors.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that its air defences intercepted and destroyed 75 Ukrainian drones over several regions during the night of 23 November, including two over the Moscow region. That tally suggests a large-scale raid in which only a small number of drones needed to penetrate local defences to hit Shaturskaya GRES.

The strike is notable for its proximity to the Russian capital, which is heavily ringed by air-defence systems and had previously been regarded by the Kremlin as relatively secure against major infrastructure attacks. Energy analysts say repeated hits on high-capacity generating sites and grid nodes in central Russia could, if continued, complicate winter-time load management and force the diversion of additional air-defence assets away from frontline areas to protect key industrial regions.

The attack also comes as US, Ukrainian and European officials meet in Geneva to discuss a controversial 28-point peace proposal advanced by the Trump administration, which critics in Kyiv and several Western capitals argue would require significant concessions from Ukraine. Against that backdrop, Ukrainian commentators portray the deep strikes on Russia’s power system as evidence that Kyiv retains the ability to inflict strategic costs inside Russia proper, even as diplomatic pressure to accept a ceasefire grows.

For residents of the Moscow region, the immediate impact has been localised disruption to heating and the sight of a major power station burning within commuting distance of the capital. For both sides, the Shaturskaya incident underlines how the war’s energy front has moved far beyond the front line, with long-range drones now targeting the infrastructure that keeps Russia’s industrial and urban centres running.