Ukraine carries out ‘largest ever’ drone attack on Moscow

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Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described it as the “largest ever” drone attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to a Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.

Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people — a 74-year-old man and a woman aged 44 — and wounded 20, local governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Writing on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kiev had used a range of missiles and drones in the attack, including Ukraine’s domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles, to hit oil and logistics facilities.

“These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” he said.

Ukraine also continued to fend off Russian attacks, Mr Zelensky said. A Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine’s Kherson region on Saturday, killing a member of the clergy and wounding four people, he said.

A Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital also killed two children and their mother on Saturday evening, said regional state administration head Tymur Tkachenko. Another child wounded in the same attack died in hospital today, he added later.

The attack took place on the final day of Russia’s first parliamentary election since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a ballot that has been virtually devoid of opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s policies and appears certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance.

Russia also held the vote in the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow annexed after the war began but still doesn’t fully control and in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Kiev denounced the action as illegal.

In a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, a Ukrainian attack killed a member of the local electoral committee, the Central Election Commission said in a statement.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said today that its forces had shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones across Russia, as well as over Crimea and the Black Sea.

The Moscow mayor said 450 drones had been destroyed en route to the Russian capital and the attack had damaged the Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.

He said the “unprecedented attack” on Moscow was an attempt to disrupt the elections, saying: “The enemy failed in this regard.”