Drone Strikes

Moscow mayor reports intercepting 1,600 drones during ‘unprecedented’ attack, accusing Ukraine of election interference.

At least two people have been killed and a major refinery has been damaged as hundreds of drones targeted the Russian capital, Moscow, and its surrounding region on the final day of the country’s parliamentary elections.

Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Sunday that more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted and shot down, 450 of which were heading for Moscow.

He also accused Ukraine of attempting to interfere with a tightly controlled three-day election that is set to tighten President Vladimir Putin’s 26-year grip on power.

“The unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed,” he said on Telegram.

Moscow regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on social media that a 44-year-old woman and an elderly man were killed in two separate locations.

A fire triggered by a drone crashing into a 21-storey building forced the evacuation of 400 people, Vorobyov said.

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.

“A facility on the territory of the Moscow Oil Refinery has been damaged,” Sobyanin added, saying that no casualties were reported so far and emergency services were on the scene.

The major refinery has already been hit by Ukrainian strikes in recent months.

The latest strike follows claims by US President Donald Trump on Monday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to target each other’s energy facilities.

It also comes as Russians vote in the country’s first parliamentary elections since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, igniting a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Moscow has also organised voting in parts of Ukraine that it has seized in the four-and-a-half-year war.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported that Russia launched 138 drones of various types across the country overnight, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

It added that air defences managed to shoot down or neutralise 101 of them.

The war in Yemen intensifies with mounting clashes and reciprocal attacks between Saudi forces and the Houthis.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have said Saudi Arabia carried out 26 strikes against areas under the group’s control in the past 24 hours, as the two sides continue trading attacks amid an escalating war in Yemen, according to the AFP news agency.

On Friday, the group claimed Saudi strikes on Houthi-held territory had reached 300 over the past week alone, hitting positions across the areas it controls, AFP reported.

Yemen’s government, backed by Saudi Arabia, said on Friday its forces had killed 30 Houthi rebels and wounded more than 60 in clashes in the al-Wazi’iyah district of Taiz province, one of several fronts where combat has picked up this week.

The exchange has come on the heels of a widening escalation of fighting in Yemen between the government’s military and the Houthi fighters.

Tens of thousands marched through Sanaa on Friday in a show of support for the Iran-backed Houthis and against Saudi Arabia, as the rebels press gains that have brought large stretches of Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait, under their control.

Earlier this week, the intensifying attacks between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels killed at least five people, including three children, according to reports from both sides.

Saudi Arabia said one person was killed in the Taif governorate after a Houthi drone was intercepted, while Houthi-linked media reported deaths from Saudi strikes in Taiz and the town of Abs.

The escalation has drawn in Washington, though reluctantly.

US officials met Houthi representatives at the US embassy in the Omani capital, Muscat, over the weekend after the group’s rapid territorial gains raised concern over shipping through Bab al-Mandeb, a vital corridor for global trade.

The Houthis reportedly assured Washington that vessels not linked to Saudi Arabia would not be targeted.

Despite appeals from Riyadh for US President Donald Trump to strike the Houthis directly, Washington has so far held back, wary of opening a new front while still fighting a costly war with Iran.

Meanwhile, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Friday the bloc’s Red Sea naval mission, Operation Aspides, had raised its alert level as the situation in the region worsened, the Reuters news agency reported.

“Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia are unacceptable and sabotage the global economy,” Kallas said in a post on X.

She added that she had spoken with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud about diplomatic efforts to end the fighting in Yemen and restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.