Russians were still casting ballots on March 17, 2024, the last day of their presidential election, when the defence ministry in Moscow announced that Ukraine had sent 35 drones at targets across the country. The ministry accused Kyiv of trying to sabotage the vote. The Guardian reported that the strikes were among the biggest air operations on Russian territory since the full-scale invasion began two years earlier.
No one was killed by the drones directly, Moscow said. But a fire broke out at an oil refinery, and electricity supplies were disrupted in several border areas.
Where the drones went
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said one drone was shot down near Domodedovo airport early that Sunday. Two more came down over Kaluga, just south of the capital, and four over the Yaroslavl region, northeast of Moscow. Yaroslavl lies about 500 miles (800km) from the Ukrainian border, which made those attacks some of the farthest Ukraine had launched so far. The defence ministry said further drones were downed over the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions along the border.
The 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.” That fire was at the Krasnodar refinery. One person there died of a heart attack, the ministry said, and the blaze was soon put out.
Kyiv’s response, and the refinery campaign
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the military and intelligence services for new “long-range capabilities” in his nightly video address. He did not mention the intensified attacks Moscow described.
A Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters that SBU drones with long range have struck 12 Russian oil refineries since the war began. A second source said the figure left out operations by the GUR military intelligence agency, which has also been attacking refineries with drones. Fuel exports are a major earner for Moscow. Russia accused Ukraine of using “terrorist activities” to try to disrupt its three-day election, and Russian media had reported attacks in many regions in recent weeks, including on refineries owned by Rosneft and Lukoil.
Fighting elsewhere that day
In the Belgorod region, Russian authorities said shelling that morning killed a 16-year-old girl and injured her father. A later attack killed one man and injured 11 people. Russian forces shot down 12 rockets fired from Ukraine toward the region, the ministry said, along with a Ukrainian Mi-8 military helicopter that was reportedly downed in Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Freedom of Russia Legion, one of the armed groups in which Russians fight on Ukraine’s side, said it had taken control of the border village of Gorkovsky.
Ukraine said Russian air attacks overnight destroyed factory buildings in the Black Sea port of Odesa, and that its forces shot down 14 Russian drones over the city on Sunday. That followed a ballistic missile assault on Friday that killed 21 people. Two Russian ballistic missiles also hit Mykolaiv, injuring at least five people, according to the regional governor.
Elsewhere, authorities in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria blamed a kamikaze drone launched from Odesa for an explosion at a military installation that destroyed a helicopter. In Chisinau, a man was detained after throwing two molotov cocktails at Russia’s embassy, where voting was under way.
