Ukraine fires over 1,000 drones at Russia, including hundreds launched at Moscow — SkimNews
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- Ukraine fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds directed at Moscow, in what Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the "largest ever" attack on the Russian capital.
- Moscow Oil Refinery and a residential building were damaged in the strike; Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said two people—a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman—were killed and 20 wounded across the Moscow region.
- Russia's Ministry of Defense said its forces intercepted 1,100 Ukrainian drones nationwide; Sobyanin reported 450 were shot down en route to Moscow and claimed the "enemy failed" to disrupt the wartime elections.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv deployed domestically produced Flamingo and Pelican missiles alongside drones to hit oil and logistics facilities, aiming to financially pressure Russia's war machine into peace talks.
- The drone wave coincided with the final day of Russia's first wartime parliamentary vote, held without anti-Putin opposition and also staged in four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions and Crimea.
- Since Russia's 2022 invasion, Ukraine has built a globally watched military drone industry, pairing long-range drones with missiles to strike deep inside Russia as the front-line ground fight has bogged down.
Why it matters: This is the largest single drone attack on Moscow of the entire war, and the civilian deaths—two people killed at home—directly punctuate the ballot-box messaging that Putin's government is trying to project during its wartime election. With Ukraine now fielding domestically built Flamingo and Pelican missiles alongside its drone fleet, the strike demonstrates a growing self-sufficiency in long-range strike capability that could compound the financial pressure Zelenskyy is explicitly trying to put on Russia's energy and logistics infrastructure.
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