Ukraine launched 35 drones at targets across Russia including in the capital region, sparking a fire at an oil refinery and disrupting electricity supplies in several border areas but causing no direct casualties, the defence ministry in Moscow has said.
As Russians cast their ballots in the final day of voting for the country’s presidential election, the ministry accused Kyiv of seeking to sabotage the vote after one of the biggest air operations on Russian territory since the invasion two years ago.
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said one drone was shot down near the capital’s Domodedovo airport early on Sunday after two were downed over Kaluga, just south of the Russian capital, and four in the Yaroslavl region, northeast of Moscow.
The attacks on Yaroslavl, about 500 miles (800km) from the Ukrainian border, were some of the farthest launched by Ukraine so far. More drones were downed over the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions bordering Ukraine, the defence ministry said.
Russian authorities also said shelling of the Belgorod region on Sunday morning killed a 16-year-old girl and injured her father, while an attack later in the day killed one man and injured 11.
Russian forces shot down 12 rockets launched from Ukraine towards the region, the defence ministry said, as well as a Ukrainian Mi-8 military helicopter that was heading towards Belgorod and was reportedly downed in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, thanked his military forces and intelligence for new “long-range capabilities” in his nightly video address, but made no reference to the intensified attacks reported by Moscow.
Russia’s defence ministry wrote on Telegram that the drones “were neutralised, but a fire broke out as a result of the fall of one of the devices”. One person died of a heart attack at the Krasnodar refinery but the fire was soon extinguished, the ministry said.
Long-range Ukrainian attack drones launched by the SBU domestic security service have successfully attacked 12 Russian oil refineries during the war, a Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters on Sunday.
A second source said that figure did not include operations by Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, which has also been attacking refineries with drones. Oil and petroleum products are key sources of export revenue for Russia.
Russia has accused Ukraine of using “terrorist activities” to try to disrupt its three-day presidential election, with attacks reported by Russian media in many regions in recent weeks, including refineries owned by Rosneft and Lukoil.
Ukraine said Russian air attacks had destroyed factory buildings in the Black Sea port of Odesa overnight and that its forces shot down 14 Russian drones over the city on Sunday after a ballistic missile assault on Friday that killed 21 people.
Two Russian ballistic missiles also hit the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Sunday, injuring at least five people, the region’s governor said, while Russian forces launched anti-aircraft guided missiles at Ukrainian-controlled areas in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Chernihiv regions.
On the ground, the Freedom of Russia Legion, one of several armed groups including Russians fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, said on Sunday that it had taken control of the Russian border village of Gorkovsky in the Belgorod region.
The Russian defence ministry, meanwhile, said its forces had captured the village of Mirne in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Interfax reported.
Pro-Russian authorities in Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transnistria on Sunday blamed a kamikaze drone strike launched from Odesa for an explosion at a military installation that they said destroyed a helicopter and sparked a fire.
The primarily Russian-speaking region, which has long depended on Moscow for support, is home to 1,500 Russian troops, nominally there as peacekeepers. Last month Transnistria appealed to Russia for “protection”, fuelling fears of a new flashpoint.
A man was detained earlier on Sunday after throwing two molotov cocktails at Russia’s embassy in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau, where voting for the presidential election was taking place.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
