Putin Faces New Blow as Ukraine Launches Record Drone Attack on Moscow
Ukraine launched what Russian officials called an unprecedented drone assault on Moscow and the surrounding region overnight, striking an oil refinery, damaging residential buildings and forcing all three of the capital’s main airports to suspend flights as Russia wrapped up a stage-managed parliamentary election.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its air defenses downed more than 1,900 drones, along with eight guided aerial bombs, eight cruise missiles and four rockets overnight. If confirmed, the tally would make it Ukraine’s largest attack of the war so far, CNN reported.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the assault “unprecedented,” saying air defenses intercepted 450 drones as they approached the capital Saturday night, according to the Financial Times.
Not all were stopped. Drones struck the Gazpromneft-Moscow Oil Refinery, one of Russia’s largest refineries, according to the FT, which also reported that a power station, a warehouse and a market near the facility were hit.
Videos circulating on social media showed fires burning across Moscow after sunrise Sunday, including one clip that appeared to capture an explosion at the refinery. Photos from the region showed a high-rise apartment building with a large black hole torn into its facade.
Andrey Vorobyov, governor of the wider Moscow region, said three people were killed and 20 others were injured, including three children. All three main Moscow airports grounded flights.
The barrage came on the final day of voting in Russia’s parliamentary elections, a contest that has offered voters only Kremlin-backed, pro-war parties. Sobyanin said the attack “was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting” the vote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not mention the election in his statement on the strikes. He said Ukraine’s “long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night,” adding that the targeted facilities were generating “billions of dollars that sustain the war machine.”
Russia continued its own attacks on Ukraine. Authorities in Kyiv said overnight drone and missile strikes killed three children and a woman.
The operation reflects Ukraine’s expanding campaign against energy, logistics and military targets deep inside Russia—a strategy aimed at raising the economic and political costs of a war Putin launched more than four years ago. Ukrainian drones have crippled roughly a third of Russia’s oil refineries, while fires have broken out at warehouses belonging to the country’s largest e-commerce company.
Last week, Maj. Gen. Anton Feliksovich Grunis, 46, who had been held up on state media as an example of Russia’s military prowess, was killed in a drone strike.
The effects are increasingly visible to ordinary Russians, with long lines at gas stations and smoke from drone attacks hanging over daily life in many cities. Even so, the parliamentary election is unlikely to loosen Putin’s grip on power. Russia’s Supreme Court barred Yabloko—the only party that voiced opposition to the war—from the ballot last month, leaving a field composed entirely of Kremlin-run, pro-war parties.
For the Kremlin, the timing is especially awkward: the attack punctured the carefully controlled image of normalcy around the vote and underscored how difficult it has become for Russia’s air defenses to protect the capital and key industrial sites. But whether the strike changes the war’s trajectory is another matter. Moscow has shown little sign of shifting course, and Russia’s political system remains tightly managed around Putin, 73, who faces rising pressure after a punishing stretch in the conflict but no serious electoral challenge.