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Ukraine war briefing: The drones that bombarded Moscow region

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces has reeled off a list of Ukrainian aerial weaponry used to destroy targets in the Moscow region over the weekend, including the RS-1 “Bars” jet-powered UAV, the Firepoint FP-1 winged drone, and a drone previously unknown to observers and analysts, dubbed the Bars-SM Gladiator. Ukraine’s SBU security service highlighted a strike on the Angstrom plant in Zelenograd, Moscow region, Russia, which “specialises in the production of hi-tech products and microcircuits for high-precision weapons … A fire was recorded on the territory of the facility. The enterprise is an important component of the Russian military-industrial complex and is involved in the production of microelectronics, radio electronics, optical systems, and robotics for the enemy’s military needs.” The SBU continued: “Also in the Moscow region, the Solnechnogorskaya pumping station was hit, which is a critical part of the ring oil pipeline around Moscow and is used for pumping, storing and shipping large volumes of gasoline and diesel fuel, in particular for the Russian army. A fire was reported on the premises.” The strikes “reduce the enemy’s ability to continue its war”, said the SBU. Russian authorities said at least four people were killed and a dozen more wounded, and reported several hits as being from “drone debris” – as they frequently do to imply that drones were shot down by Russian defences instead of striking their intended targets. Early on Monday, the Russian defence ministry sought to emphasise the role of its air defences, claiming 3,124 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the past week. Agence France-Presse said its journalists were granted access to an undisclosed location where Ukraine launched its long-range drones in what turned out to be one of the largest pummellings of Russia during the conflict. They described how battalion members prepared plane-like drones before they took off towards Russia, leaving trails of sparks and flames from their rocket boosters behind. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said taking the war to Moscow was “entirely justified”. In his nightly address, Ukraine’s president said that on Sunday, Ukrainian troops’ combat operations on the battlefield outnumbered Russian ones – “a very significant result”. “Much has been accomplished this year, and a shift in the balance of activity on the frontlines is noticeable.” Within Ukraine, the SBU said, a Russian command post in the Bunge area of Donetsk region and enemy UAV control points were hit in the Dvorichnaya area of Kharkiv region, Zavitne in Kherson region, and Udachne in Donetsk region. “In addition, Ukrainian soldiers struck enemy manpower concentrations in the areas of Myrne, Donetsk region, Krasnohirsk, Zaporizhzhia region, Volfinsky, Kursk region of the Russian Federation, as well as two concentrations of occupiers in the Novoekonomichesky district of the Donetsk region.” Over Sunday night, Russia again attacked Ukraine with drones and missiles, targeting the southern city of Odesa as well as Dnipro in the south-east, Ukrainian officials said. In Odesa, drones hit residential buildings along with a school and a kindergarten, injuring an 11-year old boy and a 59-year-old man, said Serhiy Lysak, the head of the local military administration. In Dnipro, three people were injured in a missile attack, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. Earlier, in the Zaporizhzhia region, a car was hit in a Russian attack, injuring a woman and a man. In Kherson region, the regional prosecutor’s office said a drone dropped explosives on a home, killing a man, while eight civilians were injured in attacks on regional cities and towns. A suspected Ukrainian military drone was found crashed in Lithuania on Sunday, the Lithuanian government’s crisis management centre said. The drone was not detected when it entered Lithuania, and was not armed with explosives, said the chief of the centre, Vilmantas Vitkauskas. The drone was found crashed at the village of Samane, the centre said, 40km from the Latvian border and 55km from Belarus. Kyiv was yet to comment. Separately, the Latvian army said a drone alert was issued on Sunday morning along its border with Russia, and Nato military fighters were summoned to the area. One drone entered Latvia for a short time during the alert, the army said. Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have entered the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which border Russia and its ally Belarus. Kyiv has insisted the drones were aimed at military targets in Russia but sent off course by Russian countermeasures. The Latvian prime minister, Evika Silina, fired her defence minister after one incident, leading to the fall of her government. The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces has defended Ukraine’s long-range attacks into Russia. In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Robert Brovdi, known as “Madyar”, said: “The sources of funding for Putin’s war expenses … have become legitimate and priority military targets in any area, in any part of the territory of the occupying country, whether we are talking about the south, the Urals, or Siberia.” The interview was given before Ukraine on the weekend launched its wave of more than 600 drones into Russia.

At least four people killed in Russia as Ukraine launches retaliatory strikes

One of Ukraine’s largest ever drone strikes against Russia’s regions, including Moscow, has killed at least four people and wounded a dozen more, the Russian authorities have said. The wave of almost 600 Ukrainian drones struck overnight across 14 Russian regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday, with the area around the capital among the worst-hit. Three people were killed in the Moscow region and one in the Belgorod region, the authorities said, as Russian air defences shot down 556 drones overnight and neutralised another 30 after dawn. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed the strikes, saying drones had flown more than 500km (310 miles) from Ukrainian territory and that Ukraine was “overcoming” Russian air defence systems concentrated in and around Moscow. “Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” he said, adding that the strikes on Moscow showed Kyiv was “clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war”. Zelenskyy said last week that more drone strikes would be launched in retaliation for a deadly three-day Russian attack across Ukraine that killed more than 20 people and injured about 50 others. Russia has repeatedly launched similar attacks on Ukraine’s capital and other cities during the war. Moscow’s regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said a woman had been killed when a home was hit in Khimki, north of Moscow, in what he described as a “massive” strike on the region, which surrounds but does not include the capital. Vorobyov said rescuers were still searching the debris for another person. Two men had also been killed in the village of Pogorelki, six miles north of Moscow, after drone debris fell on a construction site, he added, and several residential high-rises and “infrastructure facilities” were damaged. “Since 3am this morning, air defence forces have been repelling a large-scale UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] attack on the capital region,” Vorobyov said, adding that four people had also been wounded. India’s embassy in Moscow said one of its nationals was among the dead. In the capital itself, air defence systems intercepted more than 80 drones overnight, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, posted on social media. Twelve people were wounded and “minor damage” was recorded where the debris fell, he said. One of the strikes wounded construction workers and damaged three houses at a site near Moscow’s oil and gas refinery, Sobyanin said, adding that refinery production had not been disrupted and the “technology” of the refinery had not been affected. Ukraine’s SBU security service said an oil refinery and two pumping stations had been hit around Moscow. The strikes “reduce the enemy’s ability to continue its war”, it said, and showed “even the heavily protected Moscow region is not safe”. Russia’s largest airport – Sheremetyevo in Moscow – said drone debris had fallen inside its perimeter without causing any damage. The Moscow region is often attacked by drones but the city itself, about 250 miles from the border with Ukraine, is less frequently targeted. In Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine, one man was killed in a drone attack on a lorry, the authorities said. Russia, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of missiles in the consecutive waves of attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, Ukrainian officials said. A cruise missile hit a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv on Thursday, killing 24 people, including three children. Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday it had intercepted a further 279 Russian drones overnight, out of a total of 287 launched. Moscow and Kyiv have returned to trading attacks since the end last Tuesday of a three-day truce – which both sides accused the other of violating – to mark the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war. Diplomatic efforts to end the four-year-old conflict are at a standstill, with Kyiv unwilling to accept Moscow’s maximalist demands for territory in the eastern Donbas region and US attention turned to the US-Israeli war against Iran. Later on Sunday, a suspected Ukrainian military drone was found crashed in Lithuania, the Lithuanian government’s national crisis management centre said. The drone entered Lithuania undetected and was not armed with explosives, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the chief of the centre, told reporters. It was found crashed at the village of Samane, 40km (25 miles) from the Latvian border and 55 kilometres from Belarus. Kyiv has not commented. Separately, the Latvian army said a drone alert was issued on Sunday morning along its border with Russia, and Nato military fighters on a Baltic air police mission were summoned to the area. One drone entered Latvia for a short time during the alert, the army said. Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have entered the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which border Russia and its ally Belarus. Kyiv consistently said the stray drones were launched to strike military targets in Russia, but confused by Russian interference. Some of the drones crashed and exploded, including two drones that hit and caused fire at a Latvian oil storage facility on 7 May. The Latvian prime minister, , fired her defence minister after the incident, which then led to the fall of her government on 14 May. With Agence France-Presse and Reuters

UAE blames Iran or its proxies for drone strike fire near nuclear plant

The United Arab Emirates has blamed a fire near its nuclear power plant on a drone launched by Iran or one of its proxies in what the UAE called a “dangerous escalation”. The fire was just outside the Barakah nuclear plant and caused no injuries or radiation alerts, with the emirate’s nuclear regulator saying there was no radioactive leak or risk to the public. But it came at an extremely tense moment in the sixth week of a ceasefire in the Iran war, with peace talks stalled and Donald Trump voicing impatience at the deadlock. “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” the US president wrote on his Truth Social site. According to Axios, Trump met national security advisers on Saturday at his golf course in Virginia and is due to meet his national security team on Tuesday to discuss options. Trump also spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu before an Israeli security cabinet meeting to discuss Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, amid widespread speculation in Israel that the Iran war will restart in the absence of signs of compromise. According to state media, the UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, held talks with other states in the region, including Saudi Arabia with which it has had a strained relationship recently. Riyadh condemned the attack. The minister also informed the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, of the details of the drone strike. He told Grossi that his country had the full right to respond to such “terrorist attacks”. The IAEA said in a social media post that Grossi expressed “grave concern about the incident and says military activity that threatens nuclear safety is unacceptable”. The UAE is reported to have retaliated for earlier Iranian attacks on its oil infrastructure with airstrikes on Iranian facilities. It has tightened its partnership with Israel over the course of the war and has been the most hawkish of the Gulf states over military action against Iran. The UAE’s defence ministry said the drone that targeted the Barakah plant was one of three that “entered the country from the western border direction”. It said the unmanned aircraft had hit “an electrical generator outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah nuclear power plant in the Al Dhafra area”. “Investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the attacks, and updates will be disclosed upon completion of the investigations,” the ministry added. Anwar Gargash, an Emirati presidential adviser, made clear that he believed Iran or a regional proxy were the perpetrators. “The terrorist targeting of the Barakah clean nuclear power plant, whether carried out by the principal perpetrator or through one of its agents, represents a dangerous escalation,” Gargash wrote on X. Gargash called the incident “a dark scene that violates all international laws and norms”, and accused those responsible of having a disregard for civilian lives.

What is Ebola and why is WHO treating outbreak as global health emergency?

Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda are trying to contain an outbreak of Ebola involving – so far – 246 suspected cases and 88 deaths. It began in Ituri province, in eastern DRC, but cases have already been detected elsewhere in the country and in neighbouring Uganda. On Sunday, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” and urged robust efforts to limit its spread. What is Ebola? Ebola is a highly contagious and often fatal disease. Caused by different viruses mostly associated with fruit bats, the infection often results in viral haemorrhagic fever. More than 40 outbreaks have been documented since it first emerged in 1976. This is the 17th outbreak in the DRC. Outbreaks result from “zoonotic spillover” – animal to human transmission. Infected humans then pass on the disease to others through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood and semen. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle pain and headache followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash and internal and external bleeding. It has a 50% death rate. There are four types or strains of Ebola that affect humans: Zaire, Sudan, Bundibugyo and Tai Forest. The WHO says the latest outbreak involves the Bundibugyo virus. There have only been two previous outbreaks involving this strain, in 2007 and 2012. Why is this outbreak causing such concern? Because the strain of Ebola involved is rare, there is no vaccine for it, and conflict in the DRC makes efforts to contains its spread difficult. Dr Simon Williams, an infectious diseases expert at Swansea University, says: “This outbreak is more worrying than others because … the existing Ebola outbreak vaccine, the Ervebo vaccine, is not appropriate. There are no Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines. “And it’s a nasty disease with a very high case fatality rate; much higher than Covid, for example. Fortunately, Ebola is much less transmissible than Covid or, say, measles. But it is much more severe and can be fatal to anyone, not just the elderly or immunosuppressed or other higher-risk groups.” When no vaccine is available, infection control usually involves bringing those affected into treatment centres to minimise transmission. That may be very difficult in this case because of the conflict and the targeting of healthcare facilities, says Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia. He says: “In the past healthcare facilities have been targetted by militias and this is one reason why [affected individuals] may choose not to seek care, so pose an ongoing risk to family and other contacts.” Why was the outbreak not detected sooner and how could that delay affect what happens? The outbreak began last month. The earliest-known suspected victim, a 59-year-old man, developed symptoms on 24 April and died three days later. Health authorities were only alerted to the outbreak through social media on 5 May. Fifty people had already died by then, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Slow detection gave the outbreak time to spread, says Dr Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa CDC. Any delay in responding to an Ebola outbreak “can have catastrophic consequences”, says Dr Anne Cori, an associate professor in infectious disease modelling at Imperial College London. The large numbers of detected cases and deaths “suggests an unusually high number of suspected cases were identified before the outbreak was officially declared”, she adds. “This indicates that the outbreak has likely gone undetected for several weeks or even months, which can make standard control measures, such as contact tracing, considerably more difficult to implement effectively, especially in a setting which already faces other challenges such as conflict.” How big could this outbreak get? A lot bigger, potentially. While it began in Ituri, two confirmed cases have also been found in neighbouring Uganda – both of the infected individuals had travelled there from the DRC. One of them died at a hospital in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. The WHO fears that the high proportion of positive cases found among those who have been tested, combined with the spread to Kampala and the deaths in Ituri, “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread”. “There are significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time, it has said.

The UAE must be held responsible for its part in Sudan’s crisis | Letters

Nesrine Malik’s article is timely, highlighting how evidence of the United Arab Emirates’ complicity in Sudan’s war has begun to prompt calls for action to be taken (The UAE tries hard to keep its reputation spotless. But with the war in Sudan, how can it?, 13 May). What is now needed is a concerted international response. The UN and African fact-finding bodies have to date largely focused on the responsibility of Sudan’s warring parties for international law violations committed. It is time to complement this focus, by documenting and investigating the UAE’s involvement in the war with a view to establishing possible state and individual responsibility. This ranges from a failure to prevent both genocide in Darfur and international humanitarian law violations across the country to liability for the commission of international crimes. Such an inquiry ought not to be confined to the UAE. Multiple reports have pointed to the involvement of several states in the region and beyond in support of both sides, which has fuelled the war, particularly drone warfare. Foreign businesses and other actors have also reportedly been pivotal in sustaining and benefiting from Sudan’s war economy. Having an official report documenting violations by external actors might spur states and others into adopting overdue measures in response. It might also influence the political calculus of influential states such as the UAE which have not faced any accountability to date. If that were to happen, diminished support for and pressure on the warring parties might well raise the prospects for an end to the fighting in Sudan. In turn, this would bring into focus who should provide reparations to the victims of the war and pay for the reconstruction of the country. Sudan’s people have a right to freedom, peace and justice. This entails an end to the interference with their rights, be it from within or outside their country. Dr Lutz Oette Professor of international human rights law, Soas University of London • Nesrine Malik rightly draws attention to the fact that “successive British governments have studiously looked away from one of the primary sponsors of the Sudan calamity”, that is to say the United Arab Emirates, which, despite its repeated denials, has long supported the Rapid Support Forces with money, weapons and mercenaries. It is now nearly two years since the Guardian reported on claims that the Foreign Office was actively trying to suppress criticism of the UAE, even as the RSF was besieging the city of El Fasher in Darfur (UK ‘tried to suppress criticism’ of alleged UAE role in arming Sudan’s RSF militia, 24 June). This too was denied. The UK is the designated UN security council “penholder” for Sudan, and also for the UN’s women, peace and security file, and must do more if this devastating war is to be brought to an end. I am a trustee of a UK charity, Women’s Education Partnership, which enables disadvantaged women and girls in Sudan and South Sudan to access education. Since the war started, we have not had local staff on the ground, and the students are now displaced, trying to follow their degree courses online. Some are too traumatised to study; others have disappeared from contact lists. Most, however, are persevering despite three years of war. Sudanese women played a major role in the inspiring revolution of 2018-19. Let us hope that they will be able to flourish when peace eventually returns. Anna Snowdon Cambridge • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

WHO says Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda is ‘emergency’ of international concern

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda is a “public health emergency of international concern”, the World Health Organization has said. The WHO made its declaration on Sunday after 88 deaths and more than 300 suspected cases linked to the outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus, prompting Africa’s top health official to say he was “on panic mode”. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, announced the decision before convening a formal emergency committee at the organisation. Experts said the speed was likely to reflect the gravity of the situation. The Bundibugyo virus is one of three strains that can cause Ebola virus disease, and the least common. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the strain, or specific tests. Ebola is a highly contagious disease, spread via bodily fluids such as blood and vomit. It has a high fatality rate, particularly in low-resourced settings that are unable to provide the supportive care typically available in the intensive care units of a high-income country. Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) announced the outbreak publicly on Friday, but said it was not yet clear when it had begun. It is convening experts and likely to announce a continental public health emergency in the coming days. Dr Jean Kaseya, the director general of Africa CDC, told Sky News: “Currently, I’m on panic mode because people are dying. I don’t have medicines. I don’t have [a] vaccine to support countries.” He said the outbreak pointed to the need for vaccine and medicine manufacturing capacity on the continent, describing it as an “equity issue” and warning: “Western countries, they don’t understand that when Africa is affected, they are also at risk because people are flying every day.” Kaseya was due to be in Geneva this week for meetings at the annual World Health Assembly, but said he would return to Africa tomorrow in order to support the response. He said officials were in talks with companies who had potential tests, vaccines and treatments at an early stage of development, to see whether any could be safely used or trialled during the outbreak – expressing a hope that some would become available in the “coming weeks”. Kaseya stressed the importance of basic infection control measures such as gloves and handwashing at an earlier press briefing, although officials said many informal health facilities in the affected regions may have limited supplies of that equipment. There have been 80 suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed cases and 246 suspected cases in the DRC’s Ituri province, which is in the east of the country, bordering Uganda and South Sudan, and about five days’ travel from the capital. Two cases, including one death, have also been reported in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, apparently in people who had travelled from the DRC. A suspected case in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, had been previously reported, but the WHO later said the individual had “tested negative for Bundibugyo virus on confirmatory testing”. There were “significant uncertainties as to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time”, the WHO said. It said that the signs, however, “all point towards a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread”. The WHO stressed that, unlike for the Zaire strain of Ebola, which has caused multiple outbreaks in the DRC, “there are currently no approved Bundibugyo virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines. As such, this event is considered extraordinary”. Conflict was continuing in the Ituri region, the WHO said, with a lot of people moving around and living in close quarters in urban or suburban areas – factors that can make spread more likely. On Sunday, a laboratory confirmed a further Ebola case in the city of Goma, in a separate part of the DRC also affected by conflict and under the control of the Rwanda-backed M23 militia. “A positive case in Goma has been confirmed by tests carried out by the laboratory. It involves the wife of a man who died of Ebola in Bunia, who travelled to Goma after her husband’s death whilst already infected,” Prof Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of the Congolese National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), told AFP. Journalists from Associated Press in Ituri’s capital, Bunia, interviewed locals who said there had been unusually high numbers of burials and that they were afraid. “Every day, people are dying … and this has been going on for about a week. In a single day, we bury two, three or even more people,” said Jean Marc Asimwe, a resident of Bunia. “At this point, we don’t really know what kind of disease it is.” The WHO said the outbreak did not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency, but the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern is designed to galvanise support and resources for the affected region. An announcement from DRC officials said the first case they were aware of had been in a nurse on 24 April. Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand and co-chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, said: “We commend the director-general for acting with urgency in declaring this PHEIC. His decision to proceed ahead of convening a formal emergency committee reflects the gravity of the situation and the need for immediate global mobilisation.” She added: The world must now respond with the speed and solidarity this emergency demands – with resources, expertise, cross-border coordination, and critically, diagnostic capacity for this strain deployed to where it is needed most.”

Andalucíans vote in election seen as gauge of Spain’s wider political change

Voters in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía are casting their ballots in an election that is likely to deliver an absolute majority to the conservative People’s party (PP) and inflict another debilitating defeat on Pedro Sánchez’s embattled socialists in what was previously one of their proudest strongholds. Sunday’s election in Spain’s most populous region – the last big poll before next year’s general election – will serve as a barometer of wider electoral opinion and could also reveal whether the popularity of the far-right Vox party is beginning to peak. The PP, which has governed the former socialist bastion for the past seven years, is seeking to frame the election as a referendum on Sánchez, the country’s prime minister, whose inner circle, party and administration are facing an array of corruption allegations. According to the polls, the incumbent PP regional president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, is on course to almost replicate his result at the last election in 2022, when the conservatives won 58 of the seats in the 109-seat regional parliament. Meanwhile, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which ruled Andalucía from 1982 to 2019, looks set for its worst-ever results, dropping from 30 seats to 28. Vox, which entered mainstream Spanish politics in the 2018 Andalucían regional election, is forecast to pick up another seat or two to add to the 14 it won four years ago. Moreno is hoping another absolute majority will mean he does not need to depend on Vox, which has been seeking to drag the PP further to the right in regional coalitions by insisting Spaniards receive priority over foreign-born people for housing and public services. The regional president appears so confident of his majority that he has rubbished Vox’s so-called “national priority” policy as “an empty slogan”. Both Moreno and the PP’s national leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, are keen to use Sunday’s vote to advance the party across the country by making the most of the scandals engulfing the national government. Moreno has referred to his PSOE opponent, the former national minister and deputy prime minister María Jesús Montero, as “the lady from the past” and has spoken of the need to “bury bad politics and leave the past in the past to build the future”. Feijóo has been blunter still, saying Andalucían voters need to “choose between the conspiracy that Sánchez led and Montero watched over, and [Moreno’s] crack team”. Recent events have put the socialists under even greater pressure. Montero was fiercely criticised earlier this week for referring to the deaths of two Guardia Civil officers who lost their lives while pursuing drug-traffickers off the Andalucían coast as a “workplace accident”. She later corrected herself and said the deaths had occurred “in the line of duty”. Moreno has also found himself under fire. With 42.2% of Andalucían voters identifying healthcare as their region’s biggest problem, his handling of a cancer-screening scandal has returned to the fore during the campaign. Towards the end of last year, the regional government admitted that more than 2,300 women had not been informed of their inconclusive mammogram results, meaning follow-up tests and treatments were missed. The delay in diagnosis triggered huge anger and prompted protests that culminated in the resignation of the regional health minister. Moreno insisted this week that no one had died as a result of the administrative failure – a claim that has been challenged by campaigners. Ángela Claverol, the president of the breast cancer support association Amama Sevilla, said at least six women had died because of the failure to communicate screening results. She said the cancer scandal was indicative of a wider crisis in Andalucían health services that she and many others blame on Moreno’s privatisation of the public health system. Under Spain’s decentralised system, Spain’s self-governing regions are responsible for healthcare. “It’s awful; there are delays of up to three months for cancer surgery,” she said. “There are delays for CT scans, MRIs, appointments with oncologists, radiotherapy, etc. The delays are horrendous for oncology, but at the normal level for ordinary people, if I request an appointment with the GP at my health centre, they won’t give me one for 21 days.” Claverol said the public healthcare system had collapsed because of the regional government’s growing use of private providers. “Instead of reinvesting that money in the public sector, in hiring people, in hiring doctors, in hiring specialists, in hiring administrative staff, what they’ve done is siphon it off to the private sector,” she said. Moreno, however, says his government has modernised and upgraded hospitals and equipment and increased capacity “so that more patients can be seen and waiting times can be reduced so that we can move towards a closer, more agile and decisive health system”. Housing is another significant concern for voters in Andalucía, as elsewhere in Spain. As cities such as Seville, Málaga and Córdoba suffer the effects of overtourism – including soaring rents and a shortage of places to live – local groups are urging the regional government to focus on residents rather than tourists. Juan Carlos Benítez, a member of Albayzín Habitable, a residents’ association formed two years ago in response to dramatic changes in the picturesque Albaicín neighbourhood of Granada, said the Moreno government appeared to have opted for “a strategy of quantitative tourism over qualitative tourism”. Benítez said Granada was the latest Andalucían city to fall victim to short-term thinking that favoured rapid economic growth through tourism over sustainable development. He said recent months had been “catastrophic” for the neighbourhood, with a local health centre closing and many important local buildings being sold off for redevelopment. “It’ll become a Disneyland-type centre where no real people live and which only generates money for restaurant and shop owners, but doesn’t really benefit society as a whole,” Benítez added. Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said the results of Sunday’s election would be felt far beyond Andalucía as Spain gears up for the general election. Polls suggest that the PP will once again finish first next year, but will need Vox’s support to govern. “If Moreno Bonilla maintains his absolute majority and Vox fails to gain influence in forming a government, that will confirm the notion that Vox is now somewhat stagnant and the PP is gaining more ground,” said Simón. He said that despite performing relatively well in recent regional elections in Aragón, Extremadura and Castilla y León, there was a feeling that Vox was stalling amid internal bickering and that its chances of taking a coveted 20% of the vote might be fading. “It’s a party that’s well anchored around 13-14%,” added Simón. “That means that nationally it’s around 17%. That’s a very good result. But since they already had the idea of being at 20%, that’s backfired on them.” However, he added that any scandals involving PP-led regions – such as the conservatives’ botched handling of the deadly floods in Valencia in 2024 – could yet reverse Vox’s fortunes. Simón also said the socialists would be bracing for a “terrible” result on Sunday. “The latest poll I’ve been given shows 27 seats, so three fewer,” he said. “We’re talking about a gap of more than 20 points between the first and second party – it’s just awful.”