Ukraine launches over 1,000 drones at Russia, 2 killed

• Ukraine launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia, including 450 towards Moscow.

• Moscow refinery and residential building were damaged; two people were killed.

• The attack came on the final day of Russia's parliamentary elections.

Ukrainian forces launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds targeting Moscow, Russian officials said on Sunday as the country concluded its three-day parliamentary elections.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the barrage as the “largest ever” attack on the Russian capital. He said Russian air defences destroyed 450 drones heading towards Moscow, but some reached the city and damaged the Moscow Oil Refinery and a residential building.

The attack across the wider Moscow region killed two people and injured 20, according to regional governor Andrei Vorobyov. The victims were a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman.

Russian defence authorities said 1,100 Ukrainian drones had been shot down across the country, including over Crimea and the Black Sea. A later update put the figure at 1,110.

Sobyanin described the attack as an attempt to disrupt the final day of voting but said it had failed to do so.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had used a combination of drones and domestically produced missiles, including the Flamingo and Pelican, to strike oil and logistics facilities.

“These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the intended economic impact of the strikes.

The attack came as Russia concluded its first wartime parliamentary election since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Voting was also held in four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed, as well as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Ukraine has rejected the voting in the occupied territories as illegal.

The large-scale drone attack is part of an escalating campaign of long-range strikes between Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv has increasingly used domestically produced long-range drones and missiles to target infrastructure and military-related facilities deep inside Russia.

The attacks have intensified even as ground fighting along the roughly 1,250-kilometre front line has slowed, with drones and ground robots increasingly restricting troop movements.