Zelensky Bombs Moscow Refinery Prior to Meeting With Trump at New York This Week

Muscovites awoke yesterday to an apocalyptic sunrise tableau: pillars of fire and clouds of black smoke rising from the city’s sole oil refinery. Visible to millions, the fiery attack forced Mayor Sobyanin of Moscow to admit that the capital had endured the “largest ever” Ukrainian drone attack of the four and a half year old war.Russia’s defense ministry said its forces on Sunday shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones, almost half of them headed to Moscow. The ones that got through sent a message to the Kremlin, only 10 miles northwest of the burning oil refinery.“Moscow must end its brutal war and choose peace instead of building layered rings of air defense at the expense of other regions,” President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X. “Steps toward de-escalation are on the table — in energy and food security. What is needed is political will.”Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha of Ukraine posted: “Now that the war has come home, Russians have only Putin to blame for it. The message to him is simple: look out the Kremlin window, see the flames over Moscow — and end this war.” The drone blitz took place on the last day of Russia’s three-day elections for a new Duma or parliament. Last month, the Kremlin forced out the only anti-war party, Yabloko. On Sunday in St. Petersburg, Yabloko’s party leader, Nikolai Rybakov, cast a ballot covered in bright green writing declaring “For freedom,” and “For peace.” Kremlin political engineers stacked candidate lists with about 200 military veterans. Last weekend’s vote was the first since President Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine in 2022. Hoping to consolidate the nation behind his war, Mr. Putin released a speech last week saying the elections would “demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our troops, that we are a united people bound by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland.”Early returns show that about 57 percent of Russia’s 111 million voters turned out for this exercise, one the government calls a “civic duty.” The ruling United Russia party was getting about 58 percent of votes. The other parties — representing Communists or Nationalists — invariably vote for government bills.Elected for six-year terms, the new parliamentarians may prove to be a “transition Duma,” a group that would oversee Russia moving into a post-Putin era. Mr. Putin, who turns 74 next month, is in the middle of a term that runs to 2030.Ukraine’s drone blitz also carries a message for President Trump. On Monday, Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise! The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.” With America’s midterm elections coming in six weeks, Mr. Trump is sensitive to recent rises in American gasoline and diesel prices. Both are drivers of inflation.This week, the American and Ukrainian presidents are to meet at New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Zelensky posted yesterday on X. He said the two leaders spoke Sunday by telephone.“We agreed to meet in New York, and this meeting could change a lot. There is diplomatic momentum,” the Ukrainian said. “There are ideas for de-escalation steps and for addressing fundamental security issues — energy security, food security, and the protection of human life.”With the front lines largely frozen over the last three years, the war has evolved into a drone and missile battle. Both sides are deep in an arms race to seek to develop faster and deadlier missiles and better interceptors. In the Sunday barrage, Mr. Zelensky said that all the drones and missiles were made in Ukraine.On September 9, Ukraine set a distance record for its attacks on Russia. FP-1 drones flew 1,800 miles northeast of Ukraine to hit two Siberian gas plants. That is the equivalent of firing a missile from New York to Denver.Russia, for its part, displayed its missile prowess last week in hitting a rail station and border post less than a mile from the Polish border. Over the course of the week, Russia fired against Ukraine more than 2,000 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 19 missiles of various types, Mr. Zelensky posted yesterday. Reflecting the fast-evolving technology of the war, he wrote that the majority of the drones were “jet-powered.”With hundreds of drones flying into Western Russia on Sunday, all four of Moscow’s international airports grounded passenger jets. Earlier this month, Mr. Zelensky had promised a new way to bring the war home to Russia’s middle class, hampering air travel in the world’s eighth-largest civil aviation market. In 2025, 109 million air tickets were sold in Russia, enough for three-quarters of the nation’s population of 143 million.

Zelensky Bombs Moscow Refinery Prior to Meeting With Trump at New York This Week

Zelensky Bombs Moscow Refinery Prior to Meeting With Trump at New York This Week

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