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Ukraine has hit Moscow with what local authorities said was the largest ever drone attack on the capital, setting a major oil refinery ablaze and killing at least two people, as voting in Russia’s stage-managed parliamentary elections entered its final day.
Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defences shot down 450 drones as they approached the capital on Saturday night, calling the attack “unprecedented”.
Sobyanin claimed the attack was “clearly planned to disrupt the elections”, adding that “the enemy did not succeed”.
Several drones hit the Moscow Refinery in the south of the capital, one of Russia’s largest.
Videos on social media showed a drone exploding into the refinery, with plumes of black smoke shrouding the sunrise, and several areas of the facility on fire. A nearby power station, warehouse and market were also hit.
Drones also hit residential buildings near the refinery and at least 11 suburban towns in the surrounding region, authorities said. Two people died in the attacks and a further 20 people were injured, including three children, according to Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region.
Flights were grounded at all three of Moscow’s main airports. Russia’s defence ministry claimed to have shot down a total of 1,110 drones across the country overnight.
Kyiv and Moscow have continued striking each other’s energy infrastructure throughout the week despite Donald Trump’s claim on Monday that the warring sides had agreed to halt such attacks, which the US president blamed for the surge in global diesel prices. Trump has not commented on the attacks, which Russia and Ukraine continued within hours of his statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on social media that Ukraine had used domestically produced drones and cruise missiles to target facilities he said earned “billions of dollars that support the war machine”.
Zelenskyy said a plan to de-escalate the strikes on energy and food export infrastructure was “on the table” but required “political will”.
Russia has rejected calls for a ceasefire of attacks on energy and other infrastructure ahead of what is expected to be a major campaign of air strikes against Ukraine this winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin expects the strikes to strengthen Moscow’s position and help extract concessions from Ukraine, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Polls in the three-day parliamentary elections, the first since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, were set to close on Sunday evening. Turnout at noon local time on Sunday was 48 per cent, according to the central election commission.
The vote has proceeded without drama even by Russian standards as an array of Kremlin-run, pro-war parties compete for seats in parliament. Russia’s supreme court removed Yabloko, the only party that had expressed even mild opposition to the war, from the ballot last month.
A Russian air strike overnight on Kyiv killed a mother and two small children, while another mother and her child were injured in a separate attack, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Regional authorities said a drone destroyed a vehicle in the north-eastern region of Sumy, killing four people.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired 138 drones overnight, half of them jet-powered models that pose a greater challenge for air defences.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, had brought down jet-powered drones using a new interceptor drone.
