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, with 450 destroyed en route to Moscow, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who called it the "largest ever" attack on the capital.
- The Moscow attack damaged the Moscow Oil Refinery and a residential building, killing two people in the wider Moscow region — a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman — and wounding 20 others, per Gov. Andrei Vorobyov.
- Russia's Ministry of Defense said its forces shot down 1,100 Ukrainian drones across the country, Crimea, and Black Sea waters.
- President Zelenskyy said Kyiv used domestically produced Flamingo and Pelican missiles alongside drones to target oil and logistics facilities, stating the strikes aim to financially pressure Russia's war-sustaining economy ("billions of dollars that sustain the war machine").
- The drone barrage coincided with Russia's first wartime parliamentary election, a vote Sobyanin claimed Ukraine was trying to disrupt ("The enemy failed in this regard"), with ballots also cast in four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions and Crimea that Kyiv denounced as illegal.
- The strikes are part of a deliberate strategy to make the Russian public feel the war's consequences and pressure President Putin into negotiations, as fighting along the roughly 1,250-kilometer front line has slowed under a drone-and-robot stalemate.
- Ukraine has become a global leader in military drone technology over four years of war, deploying domestically produced long-range drones and missiles for strikes deep inside Russia that have impressed governments and defense manufacturers worldwide.
Why it matters: The strike hit a Moscow oil refinery and came alongside Russia's wartime elections — Sobyanin himself framed it as an attempt to disrupt the vote. Zelenskyy explicitly tied the targeting of oil and logistics facilities to squeezing the Russian war economy, while the timing signals Kyiv's escalation from patience to an active bid to force Putin toward negotiations amid a front-line stalemate dominated by drones and ground robots.
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