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Smoke over the Moscow Oil Refinery. September 20, 2026, Moscow
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On the third day of Russia’s parliamentary elections, Moscow came under what its mayor called the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the capital. Officials reported two deaths.

Source: Meduza
Smoke over the Moscow Oil Refinery. September 20, 2026, Moscow
Smoke over the Moscow Oil Refinery. September 20, 2026, Moscow
Reuters / Scanpix / LETA

Russian air defenses repelled the heaviest drone attack Ukraine has ever launched on Moscow, Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said. Since yesterday, he said, “more than 1,600” drones have been “repelled across all defensive lines,” including 450 shot down as they approached Moscow. “This unprecedented attack was clearly planned to disrupt the elections. The enemy did not succeed,” Sobyanin said.

September 20 is the third day of voting in Russia. Moscow, like the rest of the country, is electing State Duma deputies. The Moscow region is also voting for its regional legislature. The website of Moscow’s mayor and city government said the third day of voting in the city “began as normal.”

What we know about the aftermath of the attack:

Warning: the video below contains profanity.
  • A facility on the grounds of the Moscow Oil Refinery in Kapotnya was damaged. Witness photos and videos show a fire at the plant. The refinery is one of Russia’s largest and a key fuel supplier for Moscow and the surrounding region. Ukrainian drones have attacked it several times before.
  • The news outlet Astra, citing witness photos and videos, suggested that one of the hits on the refinery may have been caused by a Russian Pantsir air-defense system.
  • One of the drones struck a residential building in Moscow. Sobyanin did not give the address; earlier he said a building near Orekhovy Boulevard had been hit. Astra said a drone came down and exploded next to 16 Borisovskiye Prudy Street, Building 2.
  • Moscow region Governor Andrey Vorobyov said that early on the morning of September 20, air defenses and electronic warfare systems shot down or jammed 249 Ukrainian drones across 17 districts of the region.
  • As of 10 a.m., Vorobyov said, two people had been killed — residents of the Orekhovo-Zuyevsky and Ramensky districts — and about 20 injured, including three children. Fifteen of the injured were taken to hospitals; six were treated at the scene.
  • The worst damage, he said, was in the Ramensky district. On Severnoye Highway, a drone fell onto the roof of a 21-story apartment building, and the roof caught fire. Four hundred people were evacuated, and 20 cars were damaged. In the village of Sofyino, a Ukrainian drone hit a three-story apartment building, damaging six apartments.
  • A warehouse in Sofyino also caught fire after the attack. Astra said it was the logistics complex run by Sovremennye Skladskiye Tekhnologii — six buildings covering a total of 290,000 square meters. A Pantsir system is stationed 500 meters from the site, Astra said.
  • Combined heat and power plant No. 22 in Dzerzhinsky, outside Moscow, was also hit, according to Ukrainian monitoring channels and Astra. The plant is about 2 kilometers from the Moscow Oil Refinery and supplies electricity and heat to southeastern Moscow, Dzerzhinsky, and part of the Lyubertsy district. Authorities have not reported an attack on the plant.
  • In the Novye Kotelniki neighborhood of Kotelniki, a drone strike set fire to apartments on three floors of a high-rise. Local authorities said three buildings were damaged in all. Private homes were damaged in Ramenskoye, Kolomna, and Yegoryevsk, and fires broke out in apartment buildings in Leninsky, Lyubertsy, and Lytkarino. In Istra, a residential building and a commercial building were damaged. There was damage in Voskresensk as well, though no details were given.
  • Moscow’s Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, and Zhukovsky airports restricted takeoffs and landings. About 100 flights were delayed or canceled.
  • Russia’s Defense Ministry said that overnight into September 20, Russian air defenses shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, annexed Crimea, and the Black Sea. The ministry did not say how many drones had been launched.
  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strike on Moscow and the surrounding region. He said Ukrainian forces fired Flamingo missiles at Russia along with the drones. Besides the refinery and the warehouse in the Moscow region, Zelensky said, a facility in the Voronezh region was hit. “Moscow should stop building layered rings of air defenses at other regions’ expense and instead end its brutal war and choose peace,” he said.

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

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