Russia Ukraine war latest: Russian polling ballots found in breakaway Moldova

Russian forces launched three-dozen drones across several Ukrainian regions overnight, hitting civilian infrastructure, authorities in Ukraine said on Thursday.

Oleh Synehubov, governor of the eastern Kharkiv region, said on Telegram that repairs were underway after “television infrastructure objects” had been struck, but offered no further details.

Authorities in the neighboring northeastern Sumy region said infrastructure in four cities had come under attack by Iranian-made drones.

Ukraine‘s military said it shot down 22 of the 36 drones launched overnight by Russia.

Five were shot down over Ukraine‘s southern Mykolaiv and southeastern Dnipropetrovsk regions, local officials said. There were no immediate details about where the other drones had struck or been shot down.

Russia has carried out regular air strikes on population centers far behind the lines of its two-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

A senior official in ex-Soviet Moldova said on Wednesday Moscow was breaking laws by printing ballot papers in the separatist region of Transdniestria ahead of this week’s Russian presidential election.

Moldova’s pro-European authorities have already summoned the Russian ambassador to complain about a decision to open six polling stations in the pro-Russian enclave.

The central government said the move broke an agreement to allow voting only at a single polling station at the Russian embassy in Chisinau.

The ambassador rejected the complaint as unfounded, telling reporters Russia was simply enabling some 250,000 Russian nationals in Moldova to vote, many of them in the separatist region.

“These ballots were more than likely printed right there (in Transdniestria) to avoid taking them through a border crossing,” Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Serebrian said before a government meeting.

“It is hard to say how they would have been brought over a border. Moldova’s borders are controlled and there is no way of legally bringing them in or taking them out.”

Ukraine struck Russian oil refineries in a second day of heavy drone attacks on Wednesday, causing a fire at Rosneft’s biggest refinery in one of the most serious attacks against Russia’s energy sector in recent months.

Oil prices rose two per cent partly due to concerns about supply disruption following the attacks which President Vladimir Putin said were an attempt to disrupt his country’s presidential election this week.

A day after seriously damaging Lukoil’s (LKOH.MM), opens new tabNORSI refinery in Nizhny Novgorod, Ukrainian drone attacks hit refineries in the Rostov and Ryazan regions, Russian officials said.

In Ryazan, 180 km (110 miles) from Moscow, a drone attack caused a fire at Rosneft’s (ROSN.MM), opens new tab refinery, Russia’s seventh largest and there were initial reports of injuries, governor Pavel Malkov…