IN BRIEF
- The Ukraine's drone strikes killed two people and damaged an oil refinery and a residential building in Moscow.
- The attack took place on the final day of Russia's first wartime parliamentary election.
Ukraine has fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia, including hundreds towards Moscow, as Russia wrapped up the third and last day of its parliamentary elections.
Moscow's mayor described the wave of drones on Sunday as the "largest ever" drone attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to an oil refinery, which was among several sites that supply the Russian capital, and a residential building.
Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people and wounded 20, local governor Andrei Vorobyov said. The dead were a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, he said.
Since Russia's invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has become a global leader in military drone technology, deploying domestically produced long-range drones alongside missiles for strikes deep inside Russia. Its drone technology has impressed governments and defence manufacturers around the world.
Ukraine is aiming to make the Russian public feel the war's consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no signs he intends to stop the war.
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Instead, Russia and Ukraine have been drawn into an escalating duel of long-range aerial strikes as fighting along the roughly 1,250km front line in eastern and southern Ukraine has slowed, restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening troop movements.
Ukraine says it has targeted infrastructure to damage Russia's war machine
On social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had used a range of missiles and drones in the attack — including domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles — to hit oil and logistics facilities.
"These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine," Zelenskyy said, referring to the financial pressure that Ukraine hopes to put on Russia's economy.
Ukraine also continued to fend off Russian attacks, Zelenskyy said. A Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine's Kherson region 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 Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional state administration. He later said that another child wounded in the same attack had died in hospital on Sunday.
Russia votes in an election devoid of opposition
The attack took place on the final day of Russia's first wartime parliamentary election — balloting that has been virtually devoid of opposition to Putin's policies and is all but certain to cement the Kremlin's dominance.
Russia was also holding the vote in the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began but still doesn’t fully control, and in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukraine has 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, Russia's Central Election Commission said in a statement.
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