parliamentary elections<\/a> enter their final day.<\/p>\nMoscow\u2019s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Sunday more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted, 450 of which were heading for the capital.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, authorities said at least four people were killed in overnight Russian attacks on the Kyiv region, including three children.<\/p>\n
The attacks come as Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate long-range strikes against each other.<\/p>\n
\u2018Unprecedented\u2019 attack on Moscow<\/p>\n
Moscow regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on social media that a 44-year-old woman and an elderly man were killed in two separate Ukrainian attacks. A fire triggered by a drone crashing into a 21-storey building forced the evacuation of 400 people, Vorobyov said.<\/p>\n
Sobyanin said a facility at the Moscow oil refinery was also damaged in the wave of attacks, and emergency services were on the scene. The major refinery has already been hit by Ukrainian strikes in recent months.<\/p>\n
He accused Ukraine of attempting to interfere with Russia\u2019s tightly controlled three-day election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed,\u201d he said on Telegram.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the strikes, saying: \u201cOur long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of Russia\u2019s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor\u2019s logistics facility were hit. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,\u201d he posted on X.<\/p>\n
Separately, the head \u2060of \u2060Russia\u2019s Central Election Commission said \u2060a drone attack on \u2060a civilian bus killed two people, including an election official, \u200cin a Russian-occupied part of Kherson region in Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The strikes come as Kyiv has intensified its long-range drone campaign against Russia, particularly targeting energy infrastructure to cut off a vital source of Kremlin revenue used to fund its war effort, now in its fifth year.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Dmitry Medvedenko, reporting from Moscow, said this was among the largest single-day attacks on Russia since the war began.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not seen numbers this large in the four and a half years of this conflict, especially in the past six months when Ukrainian attacks have escalated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Medvedenko said it is no coincidence that this large-scale attack is happening on the last day of the Russian elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the most important final day of the election. Will it cause people to express their frustration with how this conflict has been affecting them directly after four and a half years? Will it cause them to rally around the flag here, show unity, as President Vladimir Putin was calling on people to do? We will have to wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ukraine\u2019s air force reported that Russia launched 138 drones of various types across the country overnight, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. It said air defences managed to shoot down 101 of them.<\/p>\n
A woman and her two three-year-old children died when a Russian drone hit a home in the Kyiv region, according to the emergency service. Kyiv region\u2019s Governor Tymur Tkachenko said a girl died in hospital after a separate drone strike in another district.<\/p>\n
Tkachenko said the region endured more than a day of attacks, with 31 sites damaged across five districts. The southwestern Fastiv district sustained the most damage, with 24 sites hit, including homes, industrial and utility buildings, vehicles, and the grounds of an agricultural enterprise.<\/p>\n
Russia has been repeatedly attacking Kyiv and the surrounding region with drones in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera\u2019s Rory Challands said the Kyiv region has been targeted frequently in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese strikes have been going on in Kyiv, where you get the air raid sirens going off pretty much around the clock, with drones coming in and missiles being used on occasion as well. So, it\u2019s part of the reality of life in Ukraine at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moscow mayor says Russia has intercepted 1,600 drones since Saturday, including 450 directed at the capital. At least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84395,461,591,49,464,50,154,1084,51,47,52,48,157,159],"class_list":["post-776768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-drone-strikes","tag-elections","tag-europe","tag-headlines","tag-infrastructure","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}