Videos Show Massive Moscow Fire as Black Smoke Billows Over Russian Capital

Videos have begun to circulate online showing a massive cloud of black smoke billowing up from a fire in Moscow.

The videos began to circulate on social media early Sunday morning, when the local time in Russia would have been sometime in the afternoon. Information about the blaze was slim, as of roughly 6 p.m. local time, but local reports indicated that it broke out at an industrial warehouse in Ramenskoye, a town in the southeast portion of the Moscow metropolitan area, with officials speculating that welding might have been the initial cause.

"Russian media report a large fire in an (allegedly) industrial warehouse in Moscow region," Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of Internal Affairs, wrote in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In the post, he also shared a video showing massive plumes of black smoke from afar, with hints of flame near the ground.

"As seems to be the established norm: Something is burning in Moscow," Jason Jay Smart, a correspondent with The Kyiv Independent, wrote in his own X post. "This time, the fire seems to have broke out near the industrial zone known as 'Polygon.'"

The video Smart shared was from even further away, showing the smoke reaching far across the city.

"The cause of the fire in Ramenskoye, #Moscow region, could be welding, authorities said," NEXTA, a prominent Eastern European news outlet, wrote in another post, alongside a video taken right next to the fire itself, with first responders visible on the scene.

Newsweek reached out to Russian officials via email for comment.

Reports from various Russian news outlets, cited by Reuters on Sunday, said the fire had broken out at a warehouse housing fertilizer, and had been extinguished after reaching around 2,700 square meters in size. Tass, the state-run Russian news agency, citing information from the Moscow region prosecutor's office, echoed other reports that the preliminary cause of the fire is suspected to have been a breach of fire safety rules for welding.

While the cause of the fire, for now, appears to have been accidental, it comes at a time when drone strikes from Ukrainian forces are becoming increasingly common in the Russian capital. On August 1, Russian officials blamed the country for a drone attack that targeted a tower in the Moscow financial district. The same building had been targeted by another drone strike two days prior. In late July, two drone strikes allegedly carried out by Ukraine targeted buildings housing defense and cyber security hubs. Ukraine, however, does not typically take responsibility for attacks within Russian territory, a contentious topic among Ukraine's allies.