Ukraine targets Moscow with hundreds of drones on final day of Russian election

Ukraine has targeted Moscow and the surrounding region in a large-scale attack that involved hundreds of drones.

The attack killed at least three people and damaged what Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said was one of Russia’s “key oil industry facilities” on the final day of the country’s parliamentary elections, authorities said on Sunday.

Zelenskyy said that among the weapons used in the attack was the Pelican, initially thought to be a short-range ballistic missile, but which sources said later was a winged drone.

The president did not offer any further details, prompting media reports in Ukraine that it was a ballistic missile, only for doubt to be cast on the weapon identification later in the day.

Zelenskyy also said Ukraine had used its domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles to strike Moscow. The long-range weapon has previously been used against targets deep inside Russia and has the range to reach the country’s capital.

Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels posted images of what they said was debris from a Flamingo missile found in the Moscow region, though the claims could not be independently verified. Ruslan Leviev, the head of the open-source investigation group Conflict Intelligence Team, said the debris probably came from a Flamingo missile.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, said that more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted and shot down, 450 of which were aimed at Moscow, though these figures are often exaggerated, and Ukraine’s daily drone fire rate estimated a number in the low hundreds.

Sobyanin accused Ukraine of attempting to interfere with a tightly controlled three-day election in Russia that is expected to tighten Vladimir Putin’s 26-year grip on power.

“The unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed,” he said on Telegram.

At least three people were killed, including a 44-year-old woman and an elderly man, in separate incidents.

A fire triggered by a drone crashing into a 21-storey building also led to 400 people being evacuated, said Moscow’s regional governor, Andrey Vorobyov, without specifying the drone’s origin.

Kyiv has stepped up its campaign of long-range drone strikes against Russia in recent months, particularly against energy infrastructure, a vital source of the Kremlin’s revenue to fund its war effort.

Ukrainian ​strikes have knocked out a significant part of Russia’s oil-refining capacity, triggering oil product shortages, fuel price increases and long queues at filling stations in many regions across the country’s 11 time zones.

A facility on the territory of the Moscow oil refinery had been damaged, Sobyanin said. No casualties were reported and emergency services were on the scene. The refinery had already been hit by Ukrainian strikes in recent months.

The Pelican missile was initially thought to be the FP-7 made by Fire Point, Ukraine’s most successful long-range drone and missile maker. But several hours later, as the speculation persisted, other military sources said it was a long-range drone.

The company is also developing the longer-range FP-9, which has a range of more than 500 miles, meaning it could be used to target Moscow in the future. A test flight is expected later this autumn.

The latest strike comes after the US president, Donald Trump, said on Monday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to target each other’s energy facilities. It also comes after Russians began voting on Friday in the country’s first parliamentary elections since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Only parties that support Putin and the Kremlin’s military campaign have been registered to run. Moscow has also organised voting in occupied Ukraine. Few Russians doubt Putin’s United Russia party will coast to victory again, but the vote offers a gauge of public support for the war.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters