Moscow says it shot down 450 drones on election day. Some reached the refinery anyway.

Moscow spent the last night of its election under what Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the largest drone attack ever on the Russian capital.⁴ He said 450 drones were shot down on their way to the city and called the attack “unprecedented”. Then he conceded that several drones reached the territory of the Moscow oil refinery and one hit a residential building.¹

An air defence that claims 450 kills and still has smoke rising from the refinery has reported a count, not a success.

Reuters now reports three deaths across the wider Moscow region, citing Governor Andrei Vorobyov: two people died in the initial attacks and a third later died of injuries in hospital.³ Earlier AP reporting put the toll at two dead and 20 wounded, naming the initial dead as a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman.⁴ ABC News, citing Vorobyov’s Telegram post, reports one person killed and five injured when a drone hit an apartment block in Sofino, with the second death in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky area.¹ Sobyanin said there were no fatalities in the city itself.¹³ Reuters, citing Vorobyov, adds that 400 people, 70 of them children, were evacuated from a 21-storey apartment block in the Ramenskoye district.³

Those are one government’s figures for its own losses, and they are labelled accordingly.

On the refinery there is more than an official’s word. Reuters says its own witnesses heard blasts in Moscow and saw plumes of smoke billowing from the site.³ Al Jazeera reports Sobyanin saying a facility at the refinery was damaged and emergency services were at the scene.² Reuters says the plant has been targeted multiple times. In 2024 it processed 11.6 million metric tons of oil, producing 2.9 million tons of gasoline and 3.2 million tons of diesel.³ ABC reports that all four of Moscow’s international airports were put under temporary flight restrictions overnight.¹

Sobyanin said more than 1,600 drones had been downed since Saturday, 450 of them heading for the capital.³² Russia’s Defence Ministry put its overnight total at 1,110, which ABC describes as the largest overnight figure the ministry has ever reported.¹ The two tallies cover different periods, and both are Russian official claims. No source read here gives a Ukrainian figure for what was launched, or an independent count of anything.

The Reuters report carried by The Moscow Times says Ukraine had not commented.³ Three other reports carry a statement from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Our long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night,” he said, as quoted by Al Jazeera. He added that one of Russia’s key oil industry facilities and a logistics facility were hit.² AP quotes his rationale: “These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine.”⁴ ABC reports him saying the weapons used included the Ukrainian-made Flamingo cruise missile and the Pelican ballistic missile.¹ The Russian officials quoted in these sources speak only of drones. Which weapon hit what is not established.

Sunday was the final day of a three-day vote that AP calls Russia’s first wartime parliamentary election. AP describes the vote as nearly devoid of opposition to Vladimir Putin’s policies and its outcome as all but certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance.⁴ Sobyanin’s verdict: “The unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections.”² It is hard to disrupt a result nobody doubts. What an attack like this can do is make the war audible in the capital region on the day its government asks for a show of confidence. That is our reading, not a stated Ukrainian aim.

Reuters notes that Donald Trump announced on Monday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, and that both have carried on regardless.³ Al Jazeera says Kyiv has intensified its long-range campaign against Russian energy infrastructure to cut Kremlin war revenue.² Reuters says the strikes have knocked out a significant part of Russia’s refining capacity, bringing shortages, price rises and queues at filling stations in many regions.³ An agreement announced by a third party and observed by neither side is a press release.

The traffic ran both ways. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 138 drones overnight, of which 101 were shot down or suppressed.¹² Ukrainian authorities said at least four people, three of them children, were killed in Russian attacks on the Kyiv region, according to Al Jazeera.² ABC, citing Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, reported three dead including two children.¹ AP reports a mother and two children killed and a third child who died later in hospital.⁴

An account of the refinery damage from its operator, or from imagery analysts. Whether Washington says anything about the energy-strike halt it announced. Where Russia’s answer lands, and whether it lands on Ukrainian energy sites. And whether Kyiv or Moscow gives an account of missiles, not just drones, over the capital.