- Strikes hit Moscow’s main oil refinery and a residential building on the final day of Russia’s parliamentary election, killing at least three people, as Ukraine says nine people including three children died in Russian strikes on Kyiv and Sumy regions
MOSCOW 20 SEPTEMBER 2026 (Agencies) – Ukraine launched its largest drone attack yet on the Moscow region overnight, hitting the city’s main oil refinery and a residential building, as Russia held the final day of a parliamentary election that President Vladimir Putin has cast as a test of support for the war.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 450 drones heading for the capital had been shot down in what he called the most massive attack yet on the city, though several drones reached the territory of the Moscow oil refinery and one struck a residential building. Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defences downed 1,110 Ukrainian drones nationwide, across 19 regions along with Crimea and the Black Sea, the largest overnight total reported so far this year, surpassing the previous high of 822 in August.
Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyev said at least three people were killed and around 20 injured in the wider region. He identified two of those killed as a 74-year-old man in the Orekhovo-Zuevo district and a 44-year-old woman in Sofyino, southwest of Moscow, after a drone struck a three-storey residential building there; a third person died later in hospital. A resident of Sofyino, identified only as Vitaliy, described the strike to ABC News, saying glass went flying, people began screaming, and the building’s entrance doors had already been blown out with debris scattered everywhere by the time he turned around. In the Ramenskoye district, emergency crews evacuated 400 residents, including 70 children, from a 21-storey residential tower.
President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Kyiv had struck what he called a key Russian oil facility and a logistics site in the Moscow region using a mix of drones and missiles, including Ukraine’s domestically produced Flamingo and Pelican systems, saying the strikes represented billions of dollars that sustain the war machine. The refinery, which is owned by Gazprom Neft and sits about 25 kilometres from the Kremlin, supplies more than a third of the Moscow region’s fuel, according to Kyiv’s defence ministry, with some of its petrol, diesel and aviation fuel going to Russia’s military. Ukrainian military officials said three key units at the site had been damaged. Ukraine’s defence minister said attacking such facilities directly undermines the enemy’s ability to continue its war of aggression and supply its military formations. Reuters witnesses in Moscow reported hearing blasts and seeing plumes of smoke rising from the refinery site.
Sobyanin said the attack was an attempt to disrupt Russia’s parliamentary election, held over three days from September 18 to 20, saying it had clearly been planned with that aim but that the adversary had failed to achieve it. Ukraine did not say the election itself was a target of the strikes. The vote, held in the absence of any credible opposition, is widely expected to hand a win to Putin’s United Russia party and has been dismissed by critics as neither free, fair nor transparent. Russian state media reported that an election official was one of two people killed by a drone attack on a bus in a Moscow-controlled part of Kherson on Sunday, citing the head of Russia’s election commission.
Moscow’s biggest airport, Sheremetyevo, warned passengers overnight that temporary restrictions were in place, while all arrivals and departures were halted at the capital’s Vnukovo airport. Restrictions at both airports were lifted by Sunday morning, though each warned some flights may still be delayed.
Ukrainian officials meanwhile said nine people, including three children, had been killed in Russian attacks on the Kyiv and Sumy regions over the weekend. Kyiv regional head Tymur Tkachenko said a mother and her two small children, a boy and a girl, were killed in a Russian attack on the city of Fastiv on Saturday, and that a child injured in a separate attack in Vyshhorod, north of Kyiv, had since died in hospital. In the northeastern Sumy region, four people were killed when a Russian drone struck the car they were travelling in, according to top local official Oleh Hryhorov. Zelensky said Russia had also struck a monastery in the Kherson region with a drone on Saturday, killing one member of the clergy and injuring four others.
Russia and Ukraine have continued to strike each other’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks, targeting power generation, transport facilities and major logistics hubs, despite US President Donald Trump’s claim on social media that the two sides had agreed to stop such attacks. Ukrainian strikes have knocked out a significant share of Russia’s overall oil refining capacity this year, contributing to fuel shortages, rising prices and long queues at petrol stations domestically. Trump signed a sanctions bill on Friday targeting Russia’s economy through tariffs on the largest buyers of the country’s oil and gas, including China and India, with the legislation giving the US president powers to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on major purchasers of Russian energy. Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.