Ukraine launched what Moscow’s mayor called the largest drone attack yet on the Russian capital overnight into Sunday, killing two people in the Moscow region and damaging an oil refinery and a residential building, as Russia wrapped up the final day of a parliamentary election Vladimir Putin has framed as a test of public support for the war.
Ukrainian forces fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds aimed at Moscow, officials said. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its forces shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones across the country, occupied Crimea and the Black Sea. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said separately that more than 1,600 drones had been destroyed since Saturday, a broader two day figure that included 450 drones downed en route to Moscow specifically. “The biggest attack by enemy drones has been repelled. This unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed,” Sobyanin said on Telegram.
Moscow region Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said the attack killed a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman and wounded 20 people across the wider region. Sobyanin said there were no casualties within Moscow city itself, indicating the deaths and injuries occurred in surrounding areas rather than the capital proper. Vorobyov said 400 people, including 70 children, were evacuated from a 21-story apartment building in the Ramenskoye district after homes in the area sustained damage.
What We Know So Far
Several drones reached the grounds of Moscow’s oil refinery, and one struck an apartment building, according to Sobyanin. Reuters witnesses reported hearing blasts in Moscow and seeing smoke rising from the refinery site, though the scale of damage to the facility was not immediately known. The Moscow plant, which has been targeted multiple times previously, processed 11.6 million metric tons of oil in 2024, producing 2.9 million tons of gasoline and 3.2 million tons of diesel, according to the most recent available data. Ukrainian strikes have knocked out a significant share of Russia’s overall refining capacity in recent months, contributing to fuel shortages, higher prices and long lines at gas stations across the country’s 11 time zones.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that Ukraine used a range of missiles and drones, including its domestically produced Flamingo and Pelican missiles, to strike oil and logistics facilities. “These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the economic pressure Kyiv hopes to place on Russia. Ukraine did not otherwise comment on the specific attacks, and both sides maintain they do not deliberately target civilians.
In Russian occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Russia’s Central Election Commission said a Ukrainian attack killed a member of a local electoral committee. Reuters reported two deaths in that area, including the election official, a count that differs slightly from other reporting describing only the one electoral committee member killed, a discrepancy that had not been resolved as of the latest reporting.
Ukraine also reported continued Russian attacks over the same period. Zelenskyy said a Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine’s Kherson region Saturday, killing a member of the clergy and wounding four others. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional state administration, said a Russian attack on the capital killed two children and their mother Saturday evening; he said Sunday that a fourth victim, another child wounded in the same attack, had since died in the hospital.
Russia’s Elections Continue Amid the Attacks
The State Duma vote, the first since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, was expected to see the ruling United Russia party easily retain its dominant position within a political system critics say tolerates little dissent. Central Election Commission Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said turnout for the Duma vote and accompanying regional elections had surpassed 45 percent by late Sunday morning. Election authorities said the three days of voting had proceeded smoothly despite reported cyberattacks on Moscow’s online voting system Saturday.
Most anti-war candidates were barred from the ballot. Candidates who did run under the liberal Yabloko party, which has polled in the single digits in recent years but hoped to capitalize on war fatigue, said they feared for their freedom after courts sentenced two senior party figures to lengthy prison terms shortly before the vote over comments about the conflict; discrediting the military or spreading what authorities deem false information about it carries lengthy prison sentences under Russian law. Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov demonstrably spoiled his own ballot, writing his party’s name and the slogan “For peace” on it as an act of protest.
Putin told the nation in a televised address before the vote that the election would demonstrate support for Russian troops. “Your choice, and your will, will once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our soldiers, that we are a united people bound together by shared values, historical memory, and love for our homeland, and that no one will succeed in dividing or intimidating us,” Putin said. He separately accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to interfere in the election, citing a Ukrainian strike he said killed an election official in her home in Russian controlled Zaporizhzhia region the previous Tuesday, a claim Reuters said it could not independently verify and that Kyiv did not comment on.
The Berlin based NEST think tank, co-founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, said in a note that mounting economic strain from the war could still produce unexpected results for the Kremlin, with accumulated frustration potentially benefiting smaller, Kremlin tolerated opposition parties like the Communist Party and New People, both of which have consistently voted alongside United Russia on major issues despite their formal opposition status. Kyiv, which has suspended its own elections under martial law, dismissed the Russian vote as a pseudo election.
Why This Matters
Trump announced Monday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, an agreement both sides have continued to violate in the days since, based on the scale of Sunday’s strikes and Russia’s own continued attacks on Ukraine. The apparent breakdown of that understanding underscores the difficulty of enforcing even narrow, limited ceasefire arrangements between the two countries more than four years into the war.
Ukraine’s drone campaign reflects its emergence as a global leader in military drone technology since the invasion began, with domestically produced long range drones and missiles increasingly used to strike deep inside Russian territory and pressure the Russian public and economy directly, an approach Kyiv hopes will push Putin toward a negotiated settlement even though he has shown no indication he intends to stop the invasion. With ground fighting along the roughly 780 mile front line largely slowed by dense drone and robotic ground vehicle coverage that limits troop movement, both sides have increasingly shifted toward this kind of long range aerial exchange as the war’s primary active front.
The timing of Sunday’s attack, deliberately or not, places it directly within Russia’s electoral process, and Sobyanin’s explicit framing of the strike as an attempted disruption of the vote reflects how thoroughly the war has become intertwined with Russian domestic politics, even in an election widely expected to produce a predetermined outcome favoring the ruling party.
What Happens Next
Initial election results were expected to begin emerging around 1 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, with more complete results available Monday. Whether the vote produces any unexpected shifts toward smaller opposition parties, as the NEST think tank suggested is possible given economic strain, will become clearer once full results are released.
Given the continued mutual strikes on energy infrastructure despite the reported agreement to halt them, further attacks on both Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities appear likely in the near term. The rising civilian toll on both sides, including the additional child who died from Saturday’s Kyiv attack and the two deaths in the Moscow region, is likely to continue as both countries maintain their long range strike campaigns absent any broader ceasefire agreement.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press, Reuters and The Moscow Times
